Kengo Kuma works with the elements of Japanese tradition to create human, environmentally friendly and innovated architecture for the 21 century. He is also an engaged and productive writer, influentially shaping the architectural discourse today. Kengo Kuma established his office KK and Associates in 1990, and extended it in 2008 with a its European Branch in Paris. Since then, Kuma’s architecture is constantly present in architectural competitions, published in architectural books and magazines and discussed around the world. The firm has built a wide range of buildings, but behind all of them it is possible to read an effort to create an architecture for people, working with smaller scales, tactile and natural materials, daylight and respect for nature. The architecture of Kengo Kuma and Associates is strongly connected to Kuma’s theoretical work as a professor at The University of Tokyo where he runs the research center Kuma Lab, oriented toward new aspects of architecture, urbanism and design. Kengo Kuma has received a number of Japanese and international awards for his work, among them JIA Award for environmental architecture in 2014, International Wood Architecture Award in 2008, Mainichi Art Award in 2010, Decoration Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, etc.To quote the words by Luis Fernandez-Galiano from the introduction in AV Monographs, Kengo Kuma, Atmspheric Works 2000-2014: “The architecture of Kengo Kuma is an exemplary exercise in relinquishment. Though in his work material is particularly important, each and every one of the projects expresses a will to attain bareness that we can only call spiritual. The dissolution of form through form and elementary fragmentation of different elements and materials creates atmospheres of exact serenity and simplicity, which Juhani Pallasmaa calls “lyrical”, but that could also deserve to be considered spiritual because they take aesthetic experience to a higher level of contemplation, where as in the best Noh theater emotion springs from stillness. The great playwright Zeami proposed moving the heart of the spectators by eliminating dance, music and even words from that theater genre, and may be Kuma wants to achieve a similar effect waiving all formal resources to dilute space in a bright void.In Kuma’s work, communion with nature is expressed in the lyrical abstraction of bareness, but also in the tactile palette of materials extracted from the earth where they sit, and with which he creates intangible atmospheres and subtle worlds,…. as weightless and gentle as soap bubbles”