Kengo Kuma & Associates: The Latest Architecture and News

The China International Exchange Committee for Tall Buildings (CITAB) and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) have announced the winners of their inaugural China Tall Building Awards. Four buildings, including two designed by Zaha Hadid and Kengo Kuma, were chosen as China's best tall buildings. Other winners were recognized for their innovation, success within the urban environment, and construction excellence.

"With the support of the Architectural Society of China and the Architectural Society of China Shanghai, the first year of this regionally focused awards program was very successful, with numerous high-quality projects entering into the running under six categories of recognition," said CITAB and CTBUH.

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In the latest Tokyo National Stadium news, Kengo Kuma is firing back to Zaha Hadid's allegations regarding the "similarities" of the two designs by insisting that his "concept is completely different." As reported the Architects' Journal, the Japanese architect agrees there are some natural similarities due to appropriate sightlines and regulations, however the actual design and concept are radically different.

"I believe that the design by Zaha Hadid was excellent, with a unique shape and demonstration of her philosophy," said Kuma in a press conference. "When we consider the design is being created within the same land, using the same tracks and under the same laws it is natural and almost automatic that there are some similarities which will arise."

"And despite the technical details being similar, the concepts and designs are completely different," he added, referring to Hadid's "saddle-style" design and his flat-roofed proposal. 

Kengo Kuma & Associates and developer Harwood International have broken ground on a twisted, seven-story tower for Rolex in Dallas' Uptown district. The luxury watchmaker intends on using the 136,857-square-foot building as a new office space. It will rise adjacent to Rolex's original building on Harwood Street that was built in 1984.

According to Kuma, the building "fuses nature and architecture," and will feature a tiered Japanese-inspired garden. 

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Plans have been unveiled for Kengo Kuma's first public commission in the US. The Portland Japanese Garden has commissioned Kuma to design a new "Cultural Village" to accommodate the garden's growing popularity.

Based off the Japanese tradition of monzenmachi (gate-front towns), where activity exists just outside the gates of shrines and cultural sites, the village will provide a "free-flowing" courtyard space for events and educational activities, as well as multi-purpose classrooms, galleries, a library, tea cafe, and more. In addition to this, a new visitor entrance will be built on an existing site at the bottom of the hillside site on Kingston Avenue, just on the outskirts of downtown Portland.

"The Portland Japanese Garden's careful growth is a very important cultural effort, not only for Portland but also for the US and Japan," said Kuma in a press release.

Tokyu Corporation has unveiled a new skyscraper planned will rise adjacent to Tokyo's Shibuya Station. A collaborative design by Japanese firms Kengo Kuma, SANAA and Nikken, the 230-meter mixed use tower will feature an unprecedented, 3,000-square-meter public sky deck that promises "views of Mt. Fuji" (on a clear day).

The Shibuya tower is planned to open in 2019, a year before the Tokyo Olympics.

Kengo Kuma and Associates has won an international competition to design the new Saint-Denis Pleyel train station in France. Like Enric Miralles Benedetta Tagliabue and Elizabeth de Portzamparc, Kengo Kuma will design one of four stations that will be built as part of the ambitious Grand Paris Express (GPE) project which seeks to modernize the existing transport network and create an automatic metro that will connect new neighborhoods to Paris.

The winning project aims to serve as a multi-level extension of public space that will connect two districts currently separated by the large railway network of the Parisian North station.

Read on to learn more about Kengo Kuma’s winning proposal. 

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When Kengo Kuma's concept for the new Victoria and Albert Museum of Design (V&A) in Dundee, Scotland, was unanimously chosen as the winning design in late 2012, the jurors had stated that the proposal has been "subject to exhaustive scrutiny, including having external assessors do a detailed examination of projected costs." They stated that they "did not have to exclude any of the submissions on grounds of affordability." It is now reported, a little over two years later, that the original £45million budget has now exceeded £80million in spite of the fact that the building has already been 'redesigned' once in order to try to reign in soaring costs.

The latest obstacle in a tumultuous project history, figures released by Dundee City Council predict that Kengo Kuma and Associates' V&A museum in Dundee will cost an extra £31 million. Since unanimous selection by a competition jury in 2010, the project has been plagued by budget concerns, prompting a relocation from the original waterfront on the River Tay to a site further inland in 2012. Described by the V&A as "much more than just a building," Kuma's V&A Dundee is now slated to welcome the public in 2018, three years later than originally planned. Learn more about the delays after the break.

Ochoalcubo (Eight-Cubed) is a pioneering project in Chile that seeks to unite leading Chilean and Japanese practices with ground-breaking architecture. The collaborative enterprise was started by Eduardo Godoy, a design impresario who began working in Chile in the 1980s and who has always been a strong advocate for innovative design and architecture in the country. For a nation that boasts more than forty individual schools of architecture, the ever growing number of professionals seems to have had a relatively small impact on Chilean cities. Faced with the seemingly infinite landscape of 'cookie-cutter housing' in the suburbs, Godoy implemented Ochoalcubo in order to provide opportunities for young professionals, alongside fostering a new kind of appreciation for the profession itself. With a large number of architects having taken part in the first stage, including Smiljan Radic (designer of the 2014 Serpentine Pavilion), the third and fourth stage of what is certainly one of the world's largest active architectural laboratories will be launched in the coming days.

See images from all sixteen proposals from third and fourth stages of the Ochoalcubo project, including those by SANAA, Sou Fujimoto, Kengo Kuma, Alejandro Aravena and Atelier Bow Wow, after the break.

The fourteenth of July is Bastille Day, a day that commemorates the start of the French Revolution. Named for the fortress prison that was stormed by revolutionaries on July 14^th, 1789, Bastille Day is celebrated globally both by France and her former colonies, as well as many cities in the US. In honor of this historic date, we’ve compiled some of our favorite French projects from the past few years. In this round up you’ll find classics such as the Villa dall’Ava by OMA, as well as fantastic works like Nova Green by Agence Bernard Bühler, Pontivy Media Library and Louviers Music school by Opus 5 architectes, Platform Architecture’s Aquitanis Headquarters, L’Atoll Angers by Antonio Virga Architecte and AAVP Architecture, a Parking Attendant’s Pavilion by Jean-Luc Fugier, Kengo Kuma’s Aix en Provence Conservatory of Music, and Origami by Manuelle Gautrand Architecture. Joyeux quatorze juillet!

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Four international teams have unveiled their shortlisted proposals in the final leg of a highly anticipated competition to design a new “cultural hotspot” on the edge of the Rhine. ArtA, the “catchy” new name of what was previously known as “The Arts Cluster,” is part of a larger redevelopment project for the City of Arnhem which aims to reconnect the southern district of Rijnboog with its waterfront and establish a new home for the Focus Film Theatre and Museum Arnhem.

A sneak peak of the shortlisted proposals, after the break...

UPDATE: OMA has reportedly withdrawn from the competition.

The city of Arnhem, the Netherlands, has revealed an impressive shortlist of five firms who will compete to design a new cultural building for the city, The Arts Cluster, which will combine the Museum Arnhem and Focus Filmtheater Arnhem. 

The five firms selected from 44 entries are: Architecture Studio HH with SO-IL (United States); ABT with the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG, Denmark) with Allard Architecture; Kengo Kuma & Associates(Japan); NL Architects; and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

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After a slight redesign scaled the building’s stone facade back from the waters edge to reduce construction costs, Kengo Kuma & Associates has been granted planning permission from the city council’s development management committee to construct the V&A at Dundee. The “world-class,” competition-winning proposal will be the first V&A museum constructed outside of London, serving as an international center of design for all of Scotland.

Produced by Omar Kakar of OHM Studio Collaborative, the video above features the motto of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, "Starting from small things". The film begins to grasp the view of a man's goal to "recover the traditional Japanese building." From philosophy of nature and materiality to personal taste in film and music, Kuma travels to San Diego to share his influences and insight on the world of architecture with design students from Woodbury School of Architecture as part of their 2012 lecture series. Kuma takes you on a tour of the inspirational Salk Institute by Kahn, while mentioning a few of his favorite works. An Archdaily interview with Kuma can be viewed here.