SPACE January 2026 (No. 698)
Following the feature on Yung Ho Chang (covered in SPACE No. 690, FEATURE section), SPACE and Inha Jung (Professor, Hanyang University) trace the history of modern East Asian architecture in this interview with Kuma Kengo. Kuma experienced the rise and fall of Japan’s bubble economy firsthand during his university studies and early years of practice. Critically viewing the architecture of the bubble era – which he saw as ostentatious as American Postmodernism – he sought a different architectural path, diverging from the previous generation of architects who flourished during that economic boom. This interview with Kuma will be published in two parts. In this first installment, we examine an architectural attitude he has maintained over the years by charting the early experiences that formed his architectural foundations, his use of materials as a counterpoint to concrete, and the conceptual dichotomy between form and freedom.
©Erieta Attali
©Kengo Kuma & Associates
Interview Kuma Kengo Principal, Kengo Kuma & Associates × Inha Jung Professor, Hanyang University
Childhood as the Basis for Architecture
Inha Jung (Jung): To start, I’d like to ask about your personal background. I know that you were born in a small town near Yokohama. Could you tell us about your family environment and the town at that time?
Kuma Kengo (Kuma): Yes, I was born in Okurayama, a small town situated between the big cities of Yokohama and Tokyo. Back in 1954, when I was born, Okurayama was mostly rice paddy fields with no big buildings. It was a farming environment. I think I was very lucky to spend my boyhood in that kind of setting. My friends were basically farming the prairie in the small town, living a lifestyle that hadn’t changed much since before World War II.
As you know, satoyama means ‘village mountain’ in Japanese. It represents the basic structure of a small Japanese village where houses are aligned between the village and the mountains. Okurayama was exactly that; life there was deeply connected to the natural resources of the satoyama. Until the nineteenth century, before we had electric companies, people harvested wood from the satoyama to build houses, make furniture, and use as fuel for daily life. Without maintaining this cycle, satoyama communities couldn’t survive. My father was a strict businessman who loved design and architecture, but I also experienced that lifestyle in a farmer’s house firsthand. That experience became the basis of my architectural practice.
Jung: I read in the Korean translation of your book that you grew up in a wooden house built by your grandfather. It seems this house had a great impact on your later work. Could you describe this house and its influence on you?
Kuma: Between 1959 and 1960, many housing projects has happened in that area. Most of my friends lived in these modern houses made of new materials—no wood, no tatami, and no shoji screen. They had only vinyl closes, fluorescent light...
