KENGO
KUMA
Kengo Kuma was born in 1954.
Before establishing Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990, he received his Master’s Degree in Architecture from the University of Tokyo, where he is currently a University Professor and a Professor Emeritus.
Having been inspired by Kenzo Tange’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium, built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Kengo Kuma decided to pursue architecture at a young age, and later entered the Architecture program at the University of Tokyo, where he studied under Hiroshi Hara and Yoshichika Uchida.
During his Graduate studies, he made a research trip across the Sahara, exploring various villages and settlements, observing a unique power and beauty.
After his time as a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York, he established his office in Tokyo.
Since then, Kengo Kuma & Associates has designed architectural works in over thirty countries and received prestigious awards, including the Architectural Institute of Japan Award, the Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award (Finland), and the International Stone Architecture Award (Italy), among others. Kengo Kuma & Associates aims to design architecture which naturally merges with its cultural and environmental surroundings, proposing gentle, human scaled buildings.
The office is constantly in search of new materials to replace concrete and steel, and seeks a new approach for architecture in a post-industrial society.
FUNDAÇÃO CALOUSTE GULBENKIAN
Based in Portugal, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation promotes the development of people and organisations through art, science, education and charity, for a more equitable and sustainable society.
Founded in 1983, the Gulbenkian Modern Art Centre by British architect Leslie Martin, brings together the most complete collection of modern and contemporary Portuguese art.
In 2024 it reopens to the public reimagined by architect Kengo Kuma, with new facilities and establishing new relationships with the garden to the south of the building.
texts in inverted commas and unidentified are taken from the competition proposal submitted
A WHOLE THAT IS (MUCH) MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS PARTS
We all know that buildings, like cities, change over the course of their lives.
Often in their uses; sometimes in their inner spaces; almost always in their exterior appearance.With different rhythms, often even with objectives that seem opposite or contradictory, but always adjusting to the changes in society itself, to its understandings, needs and objectives, because both buildings and cities are always manifestations of that society’s culture.
An example of these continuous transformations that we are witnessing, often without hardly realising it, are the successive changes that have taken place in this part of the city of Lisbon, which are at the origin of the work documented here. In this case, an intervention in a building that is simultaneously the origin and the consequence of the transformations in that block, but whose repercussions extend to the city itself.
In fact, the transformation that has now taken place in the Gulbenkian Garden, by recovering the layout of the old pedestrian axis that crosses it from south to north, and opening it up to the city, has introduced changes in the dialogue between some of its parts in the urban morphology. Roughly triangular in shape, this was one of the old estates that surrounded the city of Lisbon in the second half of the 19th century, since 1852 bounded by the ring road. It was through this road, which defined the southern boundary, that the main entrance to what in 1870 became known as Santa Gertrudes Park was made. It is this old access to the garden that, with the purchase and unification of the entire property, has once again taken on importance in structuring this entire green area, which is now once again open1 to the city’s enjoyment. The old boulevard, which organised the park from the gate to the lake from the first layout, has now been restored and combined into a garden where the visitor is invited to wander through the landscape that unveils itself at every turn, in the intended “holistic integration of all elements in the landscape”.
A combination that, due to Lisbon’s complex topography, extends to the city, as this has always been an area where the various paths connect the neighbouring territories, in this case to Queluz and Sintra, intersected. The green route of this garden is thus naturally part of Lisbon’s2 so-called green corridor, as part of a continuum linking this area with the new avenues and which will be extended by an announced pedestrian3 path, through the urban park of Praça de Espanha, and then on to Monsanto.
1 Again, because important urban facilities such as the Zoo, a Velodrome and an amusement park have already been installed here.
2 An idea proposed by landscape architect Gonçalo Ribeiro Teles in 1976, and which has been gradually materialising over the last few years.
3 A continuous route that will be continued by a raised walkway, according to the winning proposal of the competition for the arrangement of the Praça de Espanha, 2017, by the NPK studio with the RUA studio.
4 Together with landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic, as designer of the park extension.
5 Designed by architects Leslie Martin with José Sommer Ribeiro, Ivor Richards and José Nunes Oliveira.
A call for tenders was made to twelve teams of architects, six from Portugal and six from abroad, who were asked to appoint landscape architects, resulting in the choice of the proposal submitted by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma4
Although it covered the whole area, the intended transformation would mainly affect the Foundation’s Modern Art Centre (CAM) building. Inaugurated in 19835, the building stood next to what was then the southern edge of the site and opened onto the old garden to the north, with its southern facade completely enclosed. Its central location in the park not only emphasised the division of the property, but also created a barrier to the intended connection between the two parts of the garden.
With a much more experimental programme than the other buildings, it was also the one that required the most corrections and adaptations to the new functional needs, namely allowing for a better rotation of exhibitions.
