DR
A Panegyric for Kengo Kuma: 褒章 - The Purple Ribbon Medal of Honour Laureate
Architectural and urban design projects
of Kengo Kuma made him one of the most prominent architects of the last decades
of the 20th and first decades of the 21st century. The
body of his work, spread across the world, speaks on its own, both in terms of quality and quantity of the achievement.
Here I focus on his equally significant contribution to education, seen as both
production and dissemination of knowledge.
George Bernard Shaw’s witty
phrase “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach”, caused both laughter and abuse.
But it also points at an unfortunate, deeply entrenched and damaging reality – unsustainable
separation of theory and practice, production of ideas and, in the case of architecture,
production of space. The most desirable and the most difficult way out from
that unproductive binary opposition would be dialectical synthesis between the
two. In my opinion, precisely that quality defines the less recognised, unique ability
of the professor and architect Kengo Kuma – his capacity of creative synthesis,
in whichever communication medium, spatial scale, or physical material he
operates. His intellect seamlessly combines sensuality and knowledge, cultural rootedness
and innovation, architecture as pragmatic production of space and architecture
as a dream. That translates into the passion of thinking, teaching and making architecture.
Holistic thinking does not
recognise specialist compartmentalisation and fragmentation of knowledge. It
does not fit into any of predefined frameworks, but keeps on imagining,
defining and producing new modes of communication. Professor Kengo Kuma
delivers his excellent lectures at the University of Tokyo and globally; he
passionately teaches design studios and ventures into various academic fieldwork
and workshop exercises. But his educational impact is far from limited to
those, exciting but still specifically academic modes of production, sharing
and advancement of knowledge. His realised projects embody and communicate the
above mentioned passion, brave innovation and restlessness of mind which seeks
and finds expressions of the core quality of architecture, a desire to, in some
way, create better world. Kuma’s projects
educate across the levels of his many skills and strengths – via contextual
explorations, spatial innovations, brave exercises in materiality, sensuality, eloquently
imagined and constructed challenges to both traditionalism and
anti-traditionalism. Elaboration of any of those themes would demand a long
essay, which would still not communicate the main educational message of his
work – that of the power of real architectural space, as simultaneously
conceived, perceived and lived, the importance of being there.
