The criteria for architecture after the tsunami is humbleness
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of humility in architectural design, especially after a disaster.
Kengo Kuma's quote highlights the need for architects to adopt a humble approach when rebuilding after catastrophic events like tsunamis. This humility should inform their designs, acknowledging the power of nature and the fragility of human life, prioritizing sustainability and respect for the environment over grandeur or excess.
In practice
During a talk on sustainable building practices, one might reference Kuma's quote to encourage architects to design with humility.
You could say that my aim is βto recover the placeβ. The place is a result of nature and time; this is the most important aspect. I think my architecture is some kind of frame of nature. With it, we can experience nature more deeply and more intimately. Transparency is a characteristic of Japanese architecture; I try to use light and natural materials to get a new kind of transparency.
My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we - architects - can effect the quality of life of the people.
I'm particularly interested in the public role that all buildings play. I believe that we architects should try to go beyond our basic obligations to the public, and our opportunities to do so are many.
The architect must get to know the people who will live in the planned house. From their needs, the rest inevitably follows.
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.
What is now called 'green architecture' is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.
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