Kuma Kengo: An Unconventional Monograph  --  Sophie Houdart & Minato Chihiro

Full Citation and Summary
Houdart, Sophie, and Chihiro Minato. Kuma Kengo:  An Unconventional Monograph. Trans. Lucy Lyall Grant. Paris: Editions Donner Lieu, 2009. Print.

Chapter Notes

A note on format: each chapter except the introduction and the last three little bits are formatted as a series of "tableaus" which deal with specific sub-issues within the chapter theme. These "settings" and the "characters" within them are presented at the beginning of each chapter to provide an overview of the condition before diving in. This choice is never directly engaged in the text. It is up to the reader to figure out the significance of the format. 

Introduction (pp. 10-20)
- Describes first meeting with Kuma in December 2001 (pp. 11); notes the original impetus for the ethnographic project: to learn about the Japanese World Fair; preparatory research & the standard way of knowing architects through interviews on the conceptual themes (pp. 12)
- Main focus: ethnography inside the office to observe the development of the architecture, compares it to ethnographies in labs (pp. 12); following specific projects rather than general workings of the office, Kuma tries to take a personal back seat by putting his architecture first, no interviews with Kuma, just observation (pp. 13)
- H&M think this as an "ethnography of Kuma" that has a large archival component made up of reports, working papers, minutes, administrative docs (pp. 13-14)
- Non-chronological format (thematic) focusing on the details of architectural practices (pp. 14) 
- 8 month embedding in Japan (pp. 15) and later casual visits to the France office 
- The approach was to understand Kuma's architecture [note the `s] through the activities of its production rather than through the speech of the architect, but the desire to keep Kuma, the singularity of the individual architect, in view (pp. 15)
- Notes his absence, stresses how his work is described through the material and setting of the architecture (pp. 15)
- Not architect as mythical genius, but the architect as a delegated figure through acting proxies (pp. 16) 
- Not a description of architects at work (sociology) but a description of what architects witness and experience (pp. 16)
- This means a different connection between rhetoric of the architect (the ideas, philosophies, etc.) and the images produced, between theory and practice; the idea, the theory is lodged in the "gaps and spaces" of the processes/images, the idea is material at every moment in the process and suffuses it (pp. 16) 
- Focus on work-in-progress rather than completion, architecture in the making (pp. 16); through narration and images, trying to gain a density to the account (Geertz, Piette) (pp. 17)
- Discussion of architecture's main themes through descriptive process: architecture as process, question of auteur style, the place of materials, media [in the artistic sense, not media technologies necessarily] for design, and the role of context (pp. 17) 

Approach Tactics (pp. 20-42)
Intro section (pp. 20-24)
- Outlines the two "tableaus," description of the setting in theatrical detail, lists the characters, note who isn't listed by name (the 13 Japanese architects) (pp. 22-23)
- This chapter as covering the various ways Houdart/Minato could have approached Kuma: through completed work, through social organization of his office, through his theory (pp. 24)
- Examines "materiality" of the frameworks: what they do and do not reveal and why (pp. 24)
Flashback (pp. 24-33)
- Narrative of original approach to Kuma through interest in the 2005 Japanese World Fair in Nagoya that Kuma was going to be contributing to through research on his work, visiting exhibitions, etc. (pp. 24-33)
- Reveals an opposition between individual creation/genius & national style/culture (pp. 27) 
- Does not reveal "design in the making" (pp. 28)
- Some general usual things architects talk about in popular interviews: local-global, Japan-international, Japan-ness, conception, modernity-tradition, nature/environment (pp. 29) 
- Revealing Kuma's design motivations and philosophy: building as "non-object" (pp. 30-31), anti-postmodernity, dissolution of the building as anti-ego gesture (pp. 32-33)
The Master of the House (pp. 33-42)
- Narration of 2001 meeting with Kuma in his office, an official interview with Kuma as representative of this technique (pp. 33-42)
- Main themes apparent: Japanese architects as close to gardeners and carpenters, close partnership with clients (like carpenters) [the architect's role] (pp. 34), mixture of Deleuzianism and national tradition in Kuma's design philosophy (pp. 34-35), the role of IT in his work as simply a design tool subsumed to the designer (pp. 36), the role of Bruno Taut as a precedent (pp. 37)
- Decision to take an observational approach and sidestep questions of intention to get at details, recapitulation of the point of the project: to ask what characterises Kuma's architecture and what makes it unique through its making (pp. 38) 

Moving Towards Existence (pp. 42-74)
Intro section (pp. 42-48)
- Outlines the two tableaus and characters, note that the whole chapter is about the design of a new glassblowing studio (pp. 44-45)
- Narrative of the change in subject from the Japan World Exhibition to the glassblowing studio; directed to the project by Kuma since it was in-progress (46-48)
- Presents the two approaches: through client meeting on site and through design documents (pp. 48)
- Presents Yuki, an architect at the office who helps find material/schedule the fieldwork (pp. 48)
What is in the Place (pp. 48-56)
- Section narrating the meeting on site between Kuma and Makoto (pp. 48)
- Kuma's approach to site visits as "feeling the site" and working with the place, first clue that he's being considered as a "non-modern" (pp. 48-49)
- Description of the meeting, Kuma asking questions of the client and having notes taken, lexicon of the client (pp. 50-51) invasion/disruption (pp. 51), discussion with the client of lunch (at a Kuma designed restaurant) as key to identifying the central issue of temperature in the studios (pp. 52-53), Kuma participating in glassblowing (pp. 54)
- The upshot that this is what Kuma's own approach to site visits means: strengthening ties with the client, outlining constraints, learning lexicon and practices that take place on site (pp. 55)
- This as activating connections which are more or less close by; the site visit always establishes new connections (pp. 55)
Inscriptions Within Inscriptions (pp. 56-59)
- Unclarity of the meaning of "beginning" in the project context, what kind of beginning? (pp. 56) 
- Narration of looking at the documents on the glass blowing studio (pp. 56-57) 
- Difficulty of genealogy of a project, stages follow each other but don't necessarily follow from one another (pp. 57), the sketch not as the first act of conception but as a later expression of a building (pp. 58); "versioning" as the operative action (pp. 58-59)
Daily Tests to Erect the Models (sic.) [in the book text this reads "...for the building"] (pp. 59-64)
- Description of a student intern making a model (pp. 59)
- Finding out productive short cuts (pp. 61)
- The reception of new information and vagaries during the model production process (pp. 62)
- She tests the model-as-plan against the site and modifies to fit, an iterative process of fitting (pp. 63)
- Note the stress on staying up late to complete production
Tests (pp. 64-68)
- Presentation of the finished model in Yamaguchi to the clients (pp. 64) 
- Presentation by members of the practice on behalf of Kuma, as proxies (pp. 64)
- Makato presents and gets new information through prompting the clients with the model, new problems brought to the fore and new issues to be resolved, increasing detail (pp. 67)
- Information = "data" here; the context of images as data that can be "turned over" (pp. 68)
FFJ the Formula (pp. 68-74)
- Another description of a model making process; a different student (pp. 68)
- Note the telephonic communication between floors of the office space (pp. 68)
- Interruptions which change the model (pp. 69) 
- Storing unused model parts since they are typical of Kuma projects: louvers (pp. 70)
- The meaninglessness of "beginning" and "end" in the architectural process through H/M's view; the fact that documents of the process are meaningless in the face of processual observation (pp. 71)

Motifs at Work (pp. 74-102)
Intro section (pp. 74-81)
- Outlines the two tableaus and characters in the design of a district in Tokyo; towers; involving Mitsui (pp. 76-77)
- The chapter is about style:  to understand Kuma's style is to examine architectural intentionality and the materialization of architectural concepts (pp. 78)
- Outline of Kuma's move from post-modern architect to a "natural architecture" through digitality, through use of wood over other materials (pp. 78-79) 
- Examining wood in practice, the way its materiality and the philosophy it represents is negotiable, the limits and terms of those negotiations will be examined (pp. 80)
- Accounts the Boeicho project and how wood figures and transforms through the project; following the "journey" of wood through various media (pp. 80-81)
Bearings (pp. 81-84)
- Outlines the main tensions of the project that Kuma's team must deal with (pp. 81-83)
- The way Kuma's team increased in importance and involvement sine the clients liked their original design (pp. 82) 
- Focusing on the way their design gained privileged status and weight in negotiations through its appearance in three kinds of architectural media (pp. 83)
The Concept Board (pp. 84-87)
- The fragmentation and distribution of information in the architectural process: the fact that no one person has a complete view of the project; the fact of not knowing where anything is taking place at any given time (pp. 84)
- The flashes of decision-making which happen outside the view of the researcher, where schedules/habits conflict [mods are asleep vibes] (pp. 84-85)
- Specific material practice of concept-making attached to collage medium: collage, assemblage, composition  photocopying, cutting, formatting (pp. 85) 
- Describes the concept board for this project and its approach to the idea of molecularization (pp. 86-87)
- Mentions the management of waste from the process of testing concepts: the waste-paper and the recycling of louvers (pp. 87)
- Collage and the reconciliation of various aspects of Kuma: Japaneseness reconciled with environmentalism on the level of his own presentation (pp. 87) 
Perspective Drawings (pp. 87-91)
- Concept board as collecting relations and adjacencies to be "inscribed" in the project, as direct cause of computational "IT" processes of drawing production (pp. 87) 
- Perspective images as mock ups of material effects; the rendering process as happening at the click of a button, the invisibility/autonomy of the computer's processes (pp. 88)
- Postprocessing as a process of incremental refining and iteration with colours, with reference to Kuma: approximation and testing (pp. 89) 
- Rendering as mapping (textures) and writing (colours) (pp. 89); a coding operation rather than drawing, one which associates image and database where colour means material, a textuality not a visuality (pp. 90)  
Models (pp. 90-95)
- Models as expanded textuality, the confrontation where a concept is reworked when it materialises, through the hard meeting with materials (pp. 90-91)
- Changes in scale and the reading of modeling materials; questions of representation where wood stands in for everything (pp. 91-92); model meaning hinges on recognition of a surface treatment as something its not (pp. 93)
- Model-making as a multi-media process where various kinds of image, model-making material, etc. work in concert (pp. 94); the preservation of the "design philosophy" through the modelling process (pp. 95)  
Testing the Louvers (pp. 95-102)
- The legal/regulatory challenges to the use of wood for louvers (pp. 95); building codes limiting use of wood for wall systems, but the loophole where ornament is exempt (pp. 96-97)
- Redefinition as a means of sidestepping regulation (pp. 97) 

Architecture in its Environment (pp. 102-136)
intro section (pp. 102-108)
- Another chapter on the Boeicho project: introduces the characters (mostly corporate representatives designated as "arrays/lists" of the companies they represent) and the two settings (pp. 102-103)
- Introduces the chapter focus on examining the tension btwn architectural creation/production and national culture (pp. 104)
- Creation: building as unique to itself and non-reproducible -- recognition: the building takes a part in authenticable "traditions" (pp. 104)
- STS methods as inviting us to go and see first-hand how the two actually happen in relation to each other (pp. 104)
- Chapter reveals how architects, clients, and engineers manipulate and shape culture as they work on materials; harmonising materials and "harmonising" culture (pp. 105-106) 
Programming Culture (pp. 108-111)
- Introduction with an anecdote where H/M notice, long after their first visit, the room where architects sleep at the office (pp. 108)
- Research happening despite and around the accumulation of design documentation: models, papers, etc. that may or may not be important (pp. 110)
- The way documents are lost, found, and travel rapidly (pp. 110) 
- The decision to allow the architects to do the parsing, no clear and final representation of culture in the design (pp. 111) 
That Which Needs to be Harmonised (pp. 111-117)
- The above juxtaposed against meetings where the question of culture is actively and directly talked over (pp. 111) 
- Description of general discussion with US consultants and the question of evoking Japanese-ness through design (pp. 112-115)
- The way materials produce specific spatial effects to approach atmospheres of national culture (pp. 115) 
- The final definition of culture as more than simple reproduction, as enhancement or amplification through specific strategies: translation, linking, echoing, and content (pp. 117) 
- Introduces the importance of the next section, which goes in-depth to the discussion presented above in this section: the importance of how culture is engaged through coordination and through coordination, the clarification of roles for groups in the project (pp. 117)
The Meeting (pp. 117-136)
- The media discussed in the previous chapter as "monstration" (bringing into existence) and "demonstration" (proving existence fulfills requirements of program) devices (pp. 117) 
- The intensification of extra-office interactions near the end of design development (pp. 118) 
- Transformation of room for meeting through formatting/choreographing media, producing linearity where there was just accumulation, the room becomes artistic medium (pp. 118); The room as evidence of success of design process (pp. 119) 
- The researcher becomes accomplice (pp. 119)
- SOM architects note the balance between coherence of "architectural vocabulary" and uniqueness, independence and coordination (pp. 120)
- The meeting as a connection-testing exercise between members of the design team, a means of coordinating action (pp. 120)
- Representation as the important support-building aspect, not necessarily the design (pp. 121-122)
- Documentation contains design but also projects; judgement on that projection (pp. 122) 
- The way representation wins out over reality in testing the louvers again (ie. using fake wood); public reception beats out philosophical coherence (pp. 125)
- The way context is dynamic, it changes and flows (pp. 127-128)
- H/M conclude that the most evident element is the endless "fair" redistribution and coordination of skills across humans and non-humans through continual negotiation (pp. 128)
- The meeting as means of considering difference pragmatically and reframing it as simply a question of coordination (pp. 128); the question of culture becomes a question of materials (pp. 129)   

The Pragmatics of Disappearance (pp. 136-182)
Intro section (pp. 136-143)
- Chapter moves to Kuma's French office in Paris, focuses on the design of Marseille's FRAC; introduces to the two tableaus in Paris and Marseille; introduces the characters, architects at the Paris office (pp. 138-139)
- Introduction by revisiting Kuma's design writing, Anti-Object, and his trajectory towards dematerialization/invisibilization of architecture into its context via Bruno Taut; focus on connections/relations over standing out from environment, formal strategies of disappearance, architecture as phenomena (pp. 140-141)
- Digital technology as a means of reconciling antagonistic binaries (pp. 141)
- General focus of this chapter is, how one immaterializes architecture, how this process works in practice (pp. 142) 
- Outlines the opening of the Paris office in 2008, some projects Kuma has in Europe (pp. 142)
- Stresses this lexicon of "pixels" in the projects, the fact that the pixel as concept is novel in Kuma's work (pp. 143)
Projecting and convincing (pp. 143-148)
- Starts with explanation from Nicolas, architect at Kuma Europe, of working with pixels; working on multiple designs in parallel through perspectives and models which are then validated (pp. 143-144)
- Stresses the youth of the employees at the Paris office and their semi-independence from the Japan office; youth on purpose, and free reign so that Kuma is surprised by the buildings the design (pp. 144-145)
- Discussions with Nicholas over how pixels appear in various projects designed by the Paris office (pp. 145-148)
- The upshot definition of architectural pixels: luminous (pp. 145), metaphoric (pp. 146), transferring (pp. 146), permeable (pp. 147), requiring special administration and maintenance (pp. 147), multiple (pp. 148), scale with resolution (pp. 148)  
Experimenting, Multiplying and Classifying (pp. 148-152)
- Houdart/Minato look at drawings of the pixel façade for FRAC (pp. 148-149) 
- The importance of having multiple files open at once, the shared folder where all architects can access files (pp. 149)
- Nicholas presents an IPR drawing with 3000 pixels, stresses the connection between pixel accumulation and cost (pp. 150) 
- H/M attach this to the accumulation of files and documentation of design (pp. 150-151) 
- Setting up of communication protocols between Paris and Japan office: continually updated system of tracking Kuma's global location & contact info in real time by his secretary, regular report-backs to Kuma, talking on the phone in an accumulation of "micro-interactions" (pp. 151) 
- Communications protocols as design platform (pp. 152) 
Manufacturing and Lightening (pp. 152-157)
- Presents a meeting between Louise (another architect at Paris office) and the lighting consultant on FRAC over lighting the pixels (pp. 152-157)
- Notes the accumulation of design material around and through the meeting (pp. 154)
- The way definitions of architectural concepts get co-defined in concert with clients and consultants, acquiring a mutual understanding and lexicon for the project [see also Loukissas 2012] (pp. 156)
Filling and Emptying (pp. 156-166)
- Focus on working on the pixels in AutoCAD (pp. 156)
- Techniques of making the past and not losing what has already been designed; data management as a question of accumulation (pp. 157)
- Description of working on the pixel façade in CAD with detailed descriptions of the architect's work (pp. 158-165)
- Descriptions of operations at the interface, the way keypresses move pixels on the screen, the way history is serial and human-readable (pp. 160-162)
- Specific practices reveal binaries in tension (pp. 164) 
- The pragmatics of disappearance are inseparable from aggregation, attachment, and connection (pp. 165)
Attaching and Detaching (pp. 166-182)
- Covers a meeting with façade engineers and the discussions surrounding methods of attachment/structure for the pixels (pp. 166) 
- The trade-offs between the effect of the pixel swarm and the connectivity that underpins it (pp. 170)

Epilogue, A Matter of Details (pp. 182-190)
- Section as a debrief of the research, going to the details (pp. 183-184)
- Trend in Kuma's work: 
- 1) pushing architecture to the limits through trust in materials (pp. 184)
- Kuma's praise of national culture of this trust; hyper-nationalistic aspect of his approach to materials (pp. 185)
- 2) Material variation with motifs, pixelization and fragmentation (pp. 187)
- Kuma's architectural environment as one of travel and circulation: the stress on his employees being mobile, on the continual movement of information via various channels (these are listed), etc. (pp. 189)
Post-Production (pp. 190-194)
- Statement on the process of doing the research (pp. 191) 
- Two major pieces of field research: on in Japan, in one go, and one in Paris, multiple visits around habitual activities (pp. 191)
- Writing up of fragmented events, the photographic project as semi-separate, documenting completed buildings (pp. 191-192)

Apropos... By Kuma Kengo (pp. 194-202)
- Kuma's response considering the research as completed (pp. 195) 
- Notes his establishment of the firm in 1986 during Japan's "bubble" (pp. 196), then small projects, less work in the 90s during an economic crash (pp. 195)
- Economic crisis as characterising his approach, simplicity of materials and trying to do more with less on tight budgets (pp. 197-198)
- H/M document the "recovery" of his office and their movement to larger projects (pp. 199)
- Kuma calls Minato Chihiro a "leading character" despite being rarely mentioned (pp. 199) 
- The way Kuma gained a level of reflection upon his process through the work of Houdart/Minato (pp. 199)