Kengo Kuma Exhibition Five Purr-fect points: Particle
Kuma Kengo’s exhibition the “Five Purr-fect Points for Public Spaces” invites us to think about five unexpected perspectives that can make our collective experiences a lot more organic, spontaneous, fun and exciting. The second one is “particle.”
No matter how large a building is, it is still made of a countless number of different particles. It is the existence of these particles that keeps us feeling levelheaded even when we are surrounded by disproportionally large, modern built environment. It is possible, Kuma believes, to design pieces of architecture as a cloud, or collection of many, many particles. When that happens, they start dissolving into the surrounding environment because they are all reduced to particle-level elements that collectively constitute the whole. The smaller, the freer, especially if you treat particles as becoming even more human-friendly by thinning or rounding off the corners. It’s important to remember that our bodies are soft and fragile. When you surround them by elements with similar quality, they will start to find unexplored potential.
The unit of the “particle” in Kuma’s design can be woven wood slabs as he used for the Sunny hills Japan.
The Yusuhara Wooden Bridge Museum (2010)
The Starbucks Coffee at Dazaifutenmangu Omotesando (2011)
Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center (2012)
The Japan National Stadium (2019)
List of works in “particle” section
浅草文化観光センター
Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center, 2012
サニーヒルズジャパン
Sunny Hills Japan, 2013
梼原 木橋ミュージアム
Yusuhara Wooden Bridge Museum, 2010
としまエコミューゼタウン (南池袋二丁目A地区市街地再開発事業)
Toshima Ecomusee Town, 2015
INIAD HUB-1東洋大学
INIAD HUB-1 Faculty of Information Networking for Innovation and Design, Toyo University, 2017
スターバックスコーヒー 太宰府天満宮表参道店
Starbucks Coffee at Dazaifutenmangu Omotesando, 2011
さかい河岸レストラン 茶蔵
Sakai Riverside Restaurant Cha-Gura, 2019
COEDA HOUSE
COEDA HOUSE, 2017
国立競技場
Japan National Stadium, 2019
東京大学大学院 情報学環 ダイワユビキタス学術研究館
Daiwa Ubiquitous Computing Research Building, the University of Tokyo, 2014
カサワビ・クープ
Casa Wabi Coop, 2018
雲の上の図書館 / YURURIゆすはら
Yusuhara Community Library / YURURI Yusuhara, 2018