In early April, nearly a decade after his previous speaking engagement at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), Kengo Kuma delivered this year’s John Hejduk Soundings Lecture to a full Piper Auditorium. With an address titled “Return to Nature,” Kuma guided the audience through a selection of his prolific work, dynamic compositions that bridge tradition and innovation, the artisanal and the computational, ranging in scale from wooden toy blocks to a 68,000-seat stadium. Nature provides the logic, and often the materials, that comprise these designs. Indeed, welcoming Kuma to the podium, Grace La—professor of architecture and chair of the Architecture Department—noted that “Kuma composes forms and materials to appear as nature itself.” As Kuma encouraged architects to reconnect with nature, three themes rose to the fore: the connection between forest and city, the use of the small particle, and the value of experimentation.
Kuma began his discussion by highlighting an historical shift in focus from the forest to the city; whereas for centuries people turned to the forest for food, fuel, and construction materials, the twentieth century witnessed an increasing reliance on the city as sustaining force. Proposing a reversal of this trend, Kuma positioned the Hiroshige Museum in Bato, Japan, as a literal and figurative gateway between town and satoyama (village mountain). Sourced from this forest, the building’s materials—cedar planks, artisan-made paper, and quarry stones—forge an indelible link with the surrounding environment. These materials, produced by area craftspeople, tie the museum to the local culture and economy, refashioning a bond between residents and the natural world.
In the case of the Hiroshige Museum, Kuma’s “return to nature” encompasses several contextually specific elements, which change in other projects depending on variables such as site and scale. Yet, throughout Kuma’s oeuvre, the use of the small particle (or unit) remains remarkably consistent. To illustrate the potential of “particlization,” as it has come to be known in the past few decades, Kuma referenced the Hōryū-ji pagoda, constructed in the 7th century in Nara, Japan. Rising five stories, this wooden tower still stands today “as if by magic,” Kuma says. “The secret of the magic,” he explains, “is small, replaceable pieces” that, in aggregate, create a dynamic whole. A damaged piece of the pagoda can be replaced without destroying the larger entity. This accretion-of-small-pieces approach is a planned obsolescence that, ironically, promotes longevity, allowing the building to endure use, weather, and time in ways not possible for a monolithic concrete structure.
Particlization as employed by Kuma is inherently sustainable. Smaller pieces of wood—for example, the 6-by-6-centimeter-thick members used in the GC Prostho Museum Research Center—can be fabricated from immature trees, forestalling deforestation by leaving old growth areas untouched. In addition, these young trees require less time to reach the desired height, allowing for more rapid production of construction materials. And as a building’s pieces are replaced, the older elements can be recycled; wood becomes fuel, while thatch becomes animal feed or compost.
In Kuma’s designs, particlization brings other benefits. Building with small pieces of wood in earthquake prone regions increases seismic resistance due to the flexibility of multiple joints, which absorb shocks more effectively than rigid concrete and steel. An accretion of smaller units also lends itself to a human scale—a quality evident in even Kuma’s larger buildings, including the Japan National Stadium (2019) in Tokyo, employing wooden planks, and the Portland Japanese Garden (2017) in Oregon, which relies on an aggregation of smaller buildings to create an intimate courtyard. Such arrangements, whether of material or spatial elements, encourage different forms of maintenance and care that may tap into traditional cultural practices like that of the Ise Shrine, ritualistic rebuilt every 20 years as a signal of impermanence and renewal.
Within his thriving international practice, Kuma holds a place for architectural experimentation. These investigative forms abide by a similar logic of particlization, yet the particle itself continues to vary. The Casa Umbrella (2008), a Milan Triennale installation inspired by Buckminster Fuller’s tensegrity structures, uses a Tyvek umbrella as the unit; when joined with others via zippers, the umbrella becomes part of a larger temporary shelter, resistant to seismic shocks and easily erected in disaster situations. The Mêmu Meadows Experimental House (2012), a prototypical cabin in Hokkaido, Japan, features a double-layer membrane stretched over a multi-piece wood frame; geothermal energy warms the uninsulated enclosure in freezing temperatures. And now there is Domino 3.0, an installation fabricated for the 2025 Venice Biennale that utilizes soft 3D-printed joints to position and secure living trees. Like Kuma’s other works, this most recent project reflects the interdependent relationship between humankind and nature. In La’s words, “abstract assemblages of small pieces produce a simultaneity of parts and wholes in a unified ecological phenomenon—mysteriously precise, ineffable, and sublime.”
