he doesn't love concrete. for his works kuma prefers wood, stone and steel. all materials he usesfor innovative forms of extraordinary beauty. his substantial architecturehas an emotional approach born in his japan and tells of his land's history and culture. as in venice, where the 13 works exhibited at palazzo franchetti are a tribute to 13 key words of the language of the rising sun.
«With this exhibition my goal was to create something that evoked Venice, this unique, ephemeral and fragile place built on water on wooden foundations. I wanted to try to portray the unique feeling you get in Venice: that feeling of being in touch with nature, with the water, the tides, the breeze. I wanted to reproduce the pleasure of feeling in a city on water on a human scale. So, this exhibition was born». These are the words of Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, who presents Kengo Kuma. Onomatopeia Architecture, a poetic and touching exhibition in the rooms of Palazzo Franchetti on the Grand Canal, in Venice.
Opened in the presence of Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, President of Qatar Museums, on the occasion of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, this exhibition is produced by Art Capital Partners and Kengo Kuma Associates with the support of Qatar Creates, which concurrently presents the documentary exhibition Building a Creative Nation, the first presentation of Qatar's five new cultural venues being developed by Qatar Museums.
At the entrance to the exhibition of Kengo Kuma, who is among the greatest contemporary architects, Laguna is an impressive site-specific installation in the garden of the Franchetti Palace. It is a five-meter-high sculpture made of milled and sandblasted aluminium sheet metal with soft, sinuous shapes that intertwine with each other as they rise toward the sky, creating a pattern through which to look at the sky and the water of the lagoon. It is a work aimed at creating a dialogue with nature and the atmosphere of the place, capturing light, reverberating reflections, and making visible and tangible the atmosphere that envelops the entire city and the whole planet.
Curated by Chizuko Kawarada (partner of Kengo Kuma & Associates studio), and Roberta Perazzini Calarota (president of ACP, Art Capital Partners), the exhibition distills into 13 onomatopoeias, as many Japanese words which represent the concepts of Kengo Kuma’s architecture.
They are poetic concepts related to the intangible and magical dialogue between nature and architecture. They are ideas that are dificult to express with a rational language, which instead lend themselves well to being evoked by onomatopoeia-words that reproduce the rhythm, the sound, the flow of what is intended to be expressed.
«Onomatopoeias were crucial in realizing my idea of architecture. I chose the 13 ones I thought were particularly relevant to Venice. Onomatopoeia is a kind of animal voice that is emitted at the physical level. It’s an experience that connects architecture, nature and human beings in an uncoded language», says Kengo Kuma, born in Yokohama in 1954, graduated in architecture from Tokyo University in 1979, and well worldwide known fot his light, ephemeral, intangible architecture made of natural elements and in tune with nature.
«Whenever I go to Venice and feel close to water as a "material, I think about the dialogue between the human and the material. In this exhibition at Palazzo Franchetti, I would like to show how I create the dialogue with materials where I never make use of a language influenced by logic. And when I do use it, it is impossible to make myself understood. That’s why I always use onomatopoeia. The material and the body talk to each other and resonate when they use this primitive language», adds Kuma who has always refused to build in reinforced concrete like most Japanese architects. Kuma left is home country in 1987 and moved to New York to study at Columbia University. Here he established Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990, since then he has been proposing architecture that opens up new relationship between nature, technology, and human beings.
In Venice, each onomatopoeia is associated with a project, which is displayed in the exhibition with a model and several photographs.
Para-para, for example
evokes the relationship between fullness and emptiness and is associated with the stadium built by Kuma in 2020 for the Tokyo Olympics. The Japan National Stadium is based on fragmentation, on the alternation of fullness and emptiness, on air flowing through the rings at different heights. But above all, despite its size, this public work is made with great use of wood and void. The result is a sense of extraordinary lightness. «I believe that the transience of architecture is essential
in today’s world, as opposed to buildings that are heavy and oppressive.
Para-para seemed to
us the most appropriate onomatopoeia to express this concept of lightness», explains Kuma.
He responds to concrete architecture with human-scale designs, reminiscent of 1950s Tokyo, in urban fabric dense with small, rigorous family buildings, built according to ancient Japanese tradition and Zen culture in total harmony with nature, amid tiny gardens, full and empty, framing portions of skies, glass and wood that reacted to atmosphere, temperature and light.
Tree of the Boat, the large installation inside Palazzo Franchetti is made up of wood too. It brings back to natural materials, to the human dimension. «We wanted to make a wooden structure that would go above the canal. In my opinion it should evoke the oak pilings that formed the foundations of Venice. Tree of the Boat also evokes the impact of water on the wood, as it wears it down over time. This installation tells of the fragility, precariousness but at the same time the resistance and resilience of wood, and of the city on the lagoon, always in search of that precarious balance that is created between different energies in the field between materials and techniques».
Natural and reclaimed materials from the Japanese architectural tradition such as metal, wood, bamboo, washi paper, water, earth, and wind, combined with the most innovative technologies, are a fundamental aspect of Kengo Kuma’s architecture. Meticulous research into materials and technologies decisively declare Kengo Kuma’s ecological choice. «The use of natural materials helps to deal mathematically with global warming», says the Japanese architect, who in Venice presents models of some of his masterpieces marked by absolute rigor in the choice of materials and dialogue with nature: from the tea ceremony pavilion in Trentino, Italy, to wonderful and bright Water/Glass House in Shizuoka province in Japan made of glass, air, vacuum, and nature: trees seem to enter the architecture and light seems to be part of it.
«Natural materials have an important direct impact on people’s lives», says Kuma, «They reduce stress levels by recreating living conditions according to nature. These living conditions are often neglected in contemporary enviornments. All of this is connected to the theme of sustainability in a broader sense». And sustainability is at the heart of Kengo Kuma’s work as well as the importance of respecting the planet and building by indulging natural elements and resources. «In the era of industrialization, architecture had to be solid, bulky and heavy. In the era we live in, where climate change is a huge problem that threatens human survival, the only possible answer should be a model of ephemeral, therefore organic, architecture that adapts to the planet, using the minimum of resources».
Kengo Kuma’s sensibility succeeds in declining aspects such as music into the discipline of architecture, such as precisely rhythm and flow, as seen in the movements and soft, sinous lines of his buildings, like in Tao a Taoist Temple, dedicated to the deity Kikoku-shi, and located in the Shippu Mountains, south of Taipei. As well as many others, this project exemplifies the philosophical position of Kuma and his masterful capacity to create buildings and installations which capture the timeless dance of all living entities and species, within our natural environment, our very habitat, using traditional materials, which in his case, include the most traditional ones such us earth, air, light, and water.
