BOOK:Kengo Kuma-Complete Works 1988–Today, Taschen Publications

From his Great (Bamboo) Wall house to the Japan National Stadium for the Tokyo Olympic Summer Games, originally planned for 2020, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma pioneered a truly sustainable approach to contemporary architecture, translating local craftsmanship and resources into a new tactile architecture. In the XXL-sized monograph “Complete Works 1988–Today” with some 500 illustrations spanning photographs, sketches, and plans, Kengo Kuma guides us through his entire career to date, detailing milestone projects as well as ongoing works. After Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito and Fumihiko Maki, Kengo Kuma has breathed renewed vigor and lightness into Japanese architecture. Departing from the modernist skyscraper of the 20th century, Kuma traveled through his native Japan to develop a truly sustainable approach, translating local craftsmanship and resources into site-specific, timely buildings. Informed by tradition, and with both feet firmly planted in the present, this “materialist” heralds a new tactile architecture marked by its engaging surfaces, innovative structures, and fluid forms, reconnecting people with the physicality of a house. More recently, the architect brought his philosophy to the Japan National Stadium built for the Olympic Games, originally planned for 2020. Kuma has said the stadium could be “the catalyst that will transform Tokyo back from a concrete city. I want it to set an example that will help alter the direction of Japanese architectural design”.-Dimitris Lempesis