Established in 1990, Kengo Kuma & Associates is a partnership led by Kengo Kuma with expertise on the fields of architecture, interior design and urban & landscape design.

Kengo Kuma & Associates aims to integrate architecture and its context, creating a firm link between the building and the place it stands, both in terms of landscape and culturally. To achieve this goal, it puts special emphasis in the use of locally available materials, and is constantly researching ways to work them and find new expressions and construction solutions intrinsic to them. Although being specially reknown for its cultural buildings, Kengo Kuma & Associates is involved at the same time in designs of very different scales and uses: from objects, passing through installations, residences, public buildings and urban developments.

Kengo Kuma & Associates has designed architectural works in over twenty countries and received prestigious awards including the Architectural Institute of Japan Award, the Spirit of Nature Wood Architecture Award (Finland), and the International Stone Architecture Award (Italy), among others.

Completed outstanding projects include V&A Dundee Museum, the museum for the China Academy of Arts, EPFL’s ArtLab, the Shanghai Shipyard 1862, Bato Hiroshige Museum and the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games New National Stadium.

Based in Tokyo, Javier Villar Ruiz is a collaborator of Kengo Kuma & Associates since 2004, as a Partner and Design Chief since 2013. He has lead projects and awarded competitions internationally such as EPFL’s ArtLab, Shanghai Shipyard 1862, the Grand Morillon Student Residences for IHEID University, the SUSA International train station, Camper Flagship stores in Barcelona and Milan, Muskaat Museum in the Philippines, the Marina waterfront development in Busan, among others.

He is also principal of his private practices Happenstance Collective [HaCo] and Office for Creative Affairs developing architecture, interior and product design projects. Has been in the past a collaborator of experimental architecture office Could 9 (Barcelona).

Javier Villar Ruiz is a licensed architect by the ETSAB (Barcelona) and complemented his studies with formation programs in the IUAV (Venice), IIT (Chicago) and Princeton University (New Jersey).

www.kkaa.co.jp