GC Prostho Museum Research Center, Kasugai, Aichi, Japan (Elevation sketch)

Kengo Kuma is a Japanese architect whose practice centers on the integration of natural materials, particularly wood, stone, and earth, into structures that respond to their landscape and cultural context. Born in 1954, he emerged during Japan's postwar reconstruction era and developed a distinctive approach that privileges tactile material expression and regional specificity over monumental form. His work ranges from small residential pavilions to institutional buildings, characterized by layered surfaces, permeable boundaries between interior and exterior, and a refusal of the glass-and-steel internationalism that dominated late twentieth-century architecture.