Kyoto University of Art and Design -Kengo Kuma-

                                                                                                               

 
Year built: 2008 

Typology: Universities and Colleges

Status: Built

Site area: 65,892.34 m²

Total floor area: 50,025.29 m²

Client: Kyoto University of Art and Design  
Location: 2-116 Uryuyama Kitashirakawa, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8271 Japan

                         

 Fotos de la obra

Mapa de Ubicación

Planos

Maqueta

Bosquejo

Kengo Kuma (Biography)

Kengo Kuma & Associates
2-24-8 BY- CUBE 2-4F Minamiaoyama Minato-ku, 107- 0062 Tokyo, Japan
Telefon +81 03 3401 7721
Fax +81 03 3401 7778

Kengo Kuma, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Architect

Kengo Kuma was born in Kanagawa, Japan in 1954. He completed his master’s degree at the University of Tokyo in 1979. From 1985 to 1986, he studied at Columbia University as Visiting Scholar. He established Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990 in Aoyama, Tokyo. From 2001 to 2008 he taught at the Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University. In 2009 he was installed as professor of the University of Tokyo. 

Among Kuma’s major works are the Kirosan Observatory (1995), Water/Glass (1995, for which he received the AIA Benedictus Award), Venice Biennale/Space Design of Japanese Pavilion (1995), Stage in Forest, Toyoma Center for Performance Arts (1997, for which he received the 1997 Architectural Institute of Japan Annual Award), Stone Museum (2000, for which he received International Stone Architecture Award 2001), Bato-machi Hiroshige Museum (2001, for which he received The Murano Prize). Recent works include Great Bamboo Wall (2002, Beijing, China), Nagasaki Prefectural Museum (2005, Nagasaki, Japan), Suntory Museum of Art (2007, Tokyo, Japan), and Nezu Museum (2009, Tokyo, Japan). A number of large-scale projects are now going on in Europe and China, such as an arts centre in Besancon City, France, and the development of the Sanlitun District in Beijing, China. 

“Our principle for the design of art schools was that the architecture must lift up the students’ spirits. Nowadays, we see lots of dry, dispiriting school buildings perhaps because there were requests for the buildings that are easy for maintenance. In order to counter such tendency, the new building for Kyoto University of Art and Design had to show something new.”

                                                                                  -Kengo Kuma

However, the project turned out to be extremely difficult for the architects. The first challenge was its site, which was almost a cliff. To build a big-scale building in this environment seemed technically impossible.

The architecture came into being with the suggestion from the structural engineer, Norihide Imamura, that the 67-strong earth anchors would link the cliff and the building.

Because the new building stands at the core of all campus activities, it had to be a place to smoothen the flow of various logistics in and around. Rather than designing a new solid object Kuma's concept was that the architecture itself could be made flexible to play different roles, such as a bridge, slope or a hole.

Avance 2 (Renders)

Tercer Avance (Renders)

Cuarto Avance (Renders)

Final