Kengo Kuma on His Design Approach to the Tokyo Olympic Stadium

Source: Architect Magazine

Last month, Tokyo-based Kengo Kuma & Associates won the commission for the new National Stadium (home of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics), a decision that reflected a return to the nation’s architectural roots—not just in choosing a native to replace London-based Zaha Hadid Architects, but also in the embrace of a largely timber construction. Kuma's stadium design exemplifies a thoughtful fusion of traditional forms and materials with contemporary technologies, informed by research and experimentation tied to Kuma’s second career in academia as head of the University of Tokyo’s Kuma-Lab.

Be it small-scale projects like 2002’s Great (Bamboo) Wall House or an expanded campus for the Portland Japanese Garden, set for completion next year (a related exhibit at Portland, Ore.’s Center For Architecture opens in February), Kuma seems less like a starchitect and more like a poetic artisan, seeking to build something meaningful as much as to design it.


ARCHITECT: 
What is your approach to the National Stadium design?

Kuma: 
Our office knows the site of the new Olympic Stadium very well, especially since it is about five minutes away on foot. I love the environment of this gaien, this outer garden park system, which has a long history. In the Meiji era, the park system was conceived as a large series of interconnected outdoor landscape spaces. Our proposal for the stadium is to reintroduce a “green connection” in the center of Tokyo.

We treated the stadium as a part of the park, using natural materials as much as possible. The other important idea was to find a way to connect the stadium to the park system by a series of shadows. Shadows under the roof are important for Japanese buildings, acting as an intermediate zone between landscape and architecture. Throughout Japanese architectural history, shadows have always connected the gardens to the building volumes. For the stadium's program, large horizontal eaves are appropriate for sheltering a large audience and thus meets the desire to connect to the landscape and the requirements for the stadium's program. This combination probably helped win support for the design. [Toyo] Ito san's design [the other finalist] is good, but the approach is fundamentally different—it aims to be an icon as opposed to part of a larger continuity.

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