Kengo Kuma and Associates: The Latest Architecture and News

Hot on the heels of its lavish breakthrough Milan store, Starbucks has opened yet another striking and innovatively-designed coffee house. However, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma's design associates an entirely different mood with the company's coffee beverages.

Starbucks Taiwan the company’s first location in the Asia Pacific, consists of 29 white shipping containers, shifted and stacked in a grid-like formation. Within the containers’ 3,444 sqft (320 sqm) of space are a variety of intimate and comfortable spaces. A drive-thru is also incorporated into the design to maximize the store’s convenience to its customers.

Videos

The V&A Dundee, in collaboration with Rapid Visual Media, have released drone footage and imagery ahead of the building’s opening, marking Kengo Kuma’s first UK project. The footage showcases the new museum jutting out into Dundee’s River Tay, inspired by the cliffs of Scotland.

The museum is formed of 2,500 pre-cast concrete panels hung from complex curving walls, casting shadows which vary depending on weather conditions. As well as being Kuma’s first UK building, the V&A Dundee is also the first dedicated design museum in Scotland.

+ 2

Kengo Kuma and Associates, in collaboration with OODA, have won a competition for the redevelopment of an old industrial slaughterhouse in Porto. The competition was launched in 2017 to transform the building, now abandoned for 20 years, into an anchor for social interaction, while maintaining the memory of the early 20th-century building.

The scheme seeks to reconnect the previously important structure with the city center, through interventions such as a bridge linking the site with a nearby metro station. Meanwhile, a vernacular roof stretching across the entire site unites old and new, under which sits a museum, library, performance space, art archive, and creative laboratory. 

+ 7

Living rooms are spaces dedicated to sharing time with family, receiving visitors, working, and carrying out a wide range of unpredictable activities. Regardless of their size, the key to an innovative design for this part of a house is in creative spatial organization, in its connection to other parts of the home and, above all, in programmatic flexibility. Here, we present a selection of exceptional living rooms captured by renowned photographers such as Hiroshi Ueda, David Foessel, and Wison Tungthunya.

Kengo Kuma & Associates, led by Yuki Ikeguchi partner in charge, have recently won a competition to design a new waterfront cultural centre as part of the masterplan for Copenhagen’s Paper Island. The unique cone shaped form will combine facilities for sports associations, harbour baths and an indoor/outdoor pool along the edge of the main canal. In a press release from Copenhagen City they praised the project on the connection created between land and sea, fulfilling Copenhagen’s vision of a new addition to Paper Island. Kengo Kuma & Associates' proposal was up against strong competition from BIG, 3XN Architects, AART Archtitects + Cubo Arkitekter and ALA Architects + Studio Octopi.

+ 5

The V&A Museum of Design Dundee has released new drone footage as the Kengo Kuma-designed project races toward its 2018 opening. At this stage, huge cast stone panels, weighing between 1.5 and 2.5 tonnes each, are being fixed in place on the curving exterior walls. Once complete, a total of 2,466 panels will wrap around the museum’s facade, the design of which has been inspired by the natural seaside terrain of Scotland’s northeastern coast.

Kengo Kuma & Associates has unveiled their design for the Odunpazari Modern Art Museum, currently under construction in Eskisehir, Turkey, a city well-regarded for its university and young, lively population. Borrowing from the scale and materiality of traditional Ottoman wooden houses, the museum seeks to become a new cultural venue that both stands out and integrates into the existing streetscape.

The city of Copenhagen have announced the shortlist of 5 firms that will compete for the design of a new aquatics center to be located on a prominent site in the Copenhagen Harbor. Planned for completion in 2021, the project will feature a 5,000-square-meter facility offering both indoor and outdoor swimming areas with views across the water to the Henning Larsen-designed Copenhagen Opera House.

Construction on Kengo Kuma’s V&A Museum Dundee is well underway, with the structure’s inclined concrete walls already beginning to take shape. This new video produced by the V&A Museum shows the latest progress of the building, with commentary from several figures working on the project, including Kuma himself.

The 2016 winning submissions of Wood Design & Building magazine’s annual Wood Design Awards have been announced, each project demonstrates innovative approaches to and excellence in wood construction within architecture and design.

“For architecture to truly be successful, it must transcend buildings and fulfill the structural, functional and aesthetic needs of a community,” said Vice-President of Market Development for the Canadian Wood Council, Etienne Lalonde. “The Wood Design Awards program is an opportunity for design teams to showcase applications of wood/wood products that ultimately lead to safe, strong and sophisticated buildings and that inspire others to use wood in construction.”

Of the approximately 200 submissions, 22 projects were selected as award recipients across seven categories, selected by an esteemed jury consisting of Peter Bohlin, Patricia Patkau and Brian Court. Special awards were also presented by the Canadian Wood Council.

Here are the 2016 award recipients…

+ 15

Construction has begun on Kengo Kuma’s design for the Tokyo 2020 National Olympic Stadium, a year after the scheme was selected to replace the original stadium design by Zaha Hadid Architects and three and a half years before the event’s opening ceremony on July 24, 2020.

Kengo Kuma & Associates have been tapped to design a new high-rise residential complex on Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow, adjacent to the new business district of Moscow City. The project will be the first urban plan in Moscow to take the form of superstructures rather than individual buildings, and will be Kuma’s first project in the Russian Capital.

Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter have been selected as the winners of an international competition to design The Icefjord Centre in the UNESCO-protected area of Ilulissat, Greenland. Beating out proposals from leading architects including Snøhetta, Studio Other Spaces, Rintala Eggertsson Architects and Kengo Kuma and Associates, the new pavilion will serve as an exhibition and gathering space for locals, tourists and researchers alike.

+ 3

Kengo Kuma and Associates has completed its 10,440 square meter Wuxi Vanke arts and shopping complex, a renovated red brick cotton mill in Wuxi, China, featuring an aluminum-clad extension.