In Tokyo, one of Kuma’s recent buildings, the Asakusa Tourist Center, is the perfect example of the impact he can have on an urban landscape. The layered, eight-floor building is eye-catching. Its floors appear higgledy piggledy, unequal in height and rising at odd angles. In the background, Tokyo Skytree, a 634-meter metal tower, looms over the Asahi Beer Hall, famed for the “golden turd” sculpture on its roof. The tower and the hall, both in metal and glass, and brutally modern, could not be any more different from Kuma’s.
For him, structures are primarily for creating new types of living spaces for society. “Buildings should work as natural environments, too,” Kuma said.