Kengo Kuma is one of the world’s most celebrated living architects. Born in 1954 in Yokohoma, he formed his company Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990. Since then he has overseen countless buildings across the world: from the Japan national stadium inspired by temple architecture, to the Nagaoka City Hall with an interior designed like a micro city.

In the cultural sector, Kuma has arguably made the greatest impact with museums and galleries across the world – including the V&A in Dundee, the Ibsen Library in Norway, and the UCCA Clay Museum recently opened in Jiangsu, China.



One of his most recent buildings was the renovation and expansion of the Centro de Arte Moderna (CAM) at the Gulbenkian in Lisbon. The original museum of contemporary art was designed by British architect Leslie Martin who had previously overseen the design team for London’s Royal Festival Hall. Martin’s brutalist, stepped building was inaugurated in 1983 and then acted as the southernmost point of the Gulbenkian complex, creating a bookend to the celebrated gardens against the rest of the triangular site which was privately owned.

Recently, the Gulbenkian were able to purchase that private site, enabling them to expand to fill the whole wedge of the urban site. CAM, however, would need to be reconfigured to no longer act as the edge of the estate, but to become permeable to both sides. Kengo Kuma was awarded the project, which comprised a vast new gardens to the southern tip as well as the expansion of the galleries and updating the building for modern art conditions and practices.





The editor of recessed.space, Will Jennings, sat down with Kengo Kuma in the Gulbenkian last year, just a short while before the project was completed ahead of its September 2024 grand re-opening with exhibitions from Leonor Antunes, a curation of women artists from the CAM collection, as well as other presentations and public activities.

Kuma’s design was the only proposal to dig down into the site for new gallery spaces, leaving as much of the purchased estate as possible for newly laid out. To the southern side of Leslie Martin’s reimagined concrete building, he added an engawa – a sweeping, tiled roof that acts as an outside space and transition from architecture to landscape. The design started with a simple sketch, a single undulating line of the engawa, now grown to completion.

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The building is now nearly finished, and it must feel a long time since your first competition entry and your initial sketch. How does the building now compare to that sketch, are your initial ideas living through the building?

Luckily for this project, the initial ideas remain almost 100%. We have a very good project team, and the client understands our philosophy very much … we have been very, very lucky.


One of those elements of continuity is the engawa shelter, which on that very first sketch is a simple line and here is now covered in titles. Can you speak about how it works and what it means for this particular building, as well as more widely for architecture and landscape?

We thought that the gardens were the most important element of this museum, and we were impressed by the history of place. By the 1960s they already had an understanding of the importance of the gardens and a their use of wood architecturally, so we are trying to hold this philosophy of the museum.

Then, we found the concept of engawa. The engawa is a kind of in-between space – between exterior and interior, and nature and architecture. By creating an engawa space, we want to emphasise the philosophy of this museum in its respect of nature and natural materials. We tried to follow that idea – and also enhance it.

This was a key concept of the competition entry, but as an idea it is not only for this project – for every project, we try to show a respect to nature and the environment. We have designed engawa spaces before … but this is maybe the biggest, biggest, biggest engawa. Normally, a client wants to maximise the interior volume – the function is very important for a client and so how to realise the maximum interior is a normal goal. In that sense, this project is unique and is a kind of monumental project for the history of museum design.


The engawa here doesn't just serve as a threshold from nature to interior, but it also changes the relationship of the museum to the city – because the main entrance is now facing south – and it also changes light qualities as well. Can you speak some of these other impacts?

Behind the engawa is an idea to reconnect the museum to the city. Maybe the original idea of the museum from the 1960s was very close to our idea, but there was a building blocking the relationship with the garden and there was a fence to the south which cut the relationship to the city. So we wanted to go to the next step, but based on the philosophies of the 1960s, so now we have created a new public space to the south of the gardens into the street, and because we have set back the wall into the garden it is a very generous public space as a new front for the museum – maybe it has totally changed the relationship between city and the museum.





And on the impact on light, this hanging curve of the engawa brings a very different quality of natural light into the museum.

Yes, our engawa is typical in its location, between the garden and the building, but section-wise is unique. This unique section brings a special effect of natural light to the engawa – and there is the beauty to the natural light dropping between the existing building and the new engawa. We have created a very narrow slit, but it creates multiple reflections between the two buildings and creates a very special natural light.

It also offers people a new view towards the gardens, a view that is very controlled, but a control that can create a new experience – the low framing concentrates the eye to the texture of the garden. It is a typical of a Japanese engawa section to drop the edge of the roof a little bit, but here the section is extreme. The back side has a high ceiling and natural light, and the front side is very low, so this contrast of the two sides creates a new experience for visitors – yes, the size of the engawa is large, but it’s not only about this, because the engawa also creates a very, very special experience.


And the qualities of this engawa can also be felt inside, in your new gallery spaces, where this slight gap between the building and engawa brings a different quality of light in. So, how have you approached the use of light inside, considering most modern museums might prefer controlled white boxes that keep natural light out.

Simply said, the protagonist of this museum is natural light. It's very different from a normal white cube. The engawa supports this natural light, so in the spaces below we have multiple galleries which each have diverse effects of natural light. Sometimes it's coming from the side, sometimes it's coming from the heavens, sometimes coming from inside, and that diversity of natural light can help define each exhibition space, and this use of natural light is totally different from standard contemporary museum spaces.


And of course, Lisbon has incredible light for you to work with, which changes throughout the year.

Yes! The natural light in Lisbon is amazing, and both visitors to Lisbon and those who live here enjoy this diversity and richness of natural light – and the Gulbenkian Museum has been a kind of showcase of these diverse effects.





This project is different to many of your other recent cultural projects of late – it’s an addition to a building, it’s both extending and reimagining. This was not a tabula rasa site. How did you contend with the original Lesley Martin Building? I know that one bit has been cut out and removed to allow for a new entry area, but there are more alterations – so how did you consider the existing building and consider its redirection?

Our first research was about the location of the place, and we realised that the east and west roads could be connected by the exhibition space, that we could connect the two streets with the museum. We have now made that connection through a very, very long gallery, almost 200 metres in length – it is a museum design, but it is also urban design, connecting the two streets, one of the ways the project has connected the city.

Then we also open the museum to the south. On my first visit I realised the garden itself is beautiful, but that the garden and museum were totally separated, different experiences, which I felt was a great pity. So, another goal was to open up the south and connect to the southern road. Connecting east and west, connecting south and north, that was our first stance to the museum design – so we start from the big idea, and then apply that big idea to smaller details, that is our process of design.





Talking about this connection between building and landscape, it isn't just in terms of visibility and viewing, but the roof of the building even collects rainwater which feeds into a wider ecosystem – so there is a more nuanced relationship between landscape and architecture.

Japanese buildings don’t have flat roofs, and the inclination of the roof defines the relationship with the gardens – and so the Gulbenkian roof defines a new relationship with the gardens, From the garden side, the low silhouette of the edge is very humble, and this shows a humble gesture to the gardens. Then, the back side is reaching to the heaven, and this shows our idea to connect the heavens and the ground. Each gesture shows an attitude to the environment. Then the section is very, very important – it comes from a method of traditional Japanese buildings.


And with this you speak to interesting ideas of fusing Japanese heritage architectural typology with that of here, Lisbon, and also the Gulbenkian museum.

Yes, it’s a really important point of this project. Historically, Portugal and Japan have many long years of friendship, the Portuguese came to Japan in the 1500s and maybe these two countries have felt a strong sympathy to each other – and Portuguese had a strong influence on Japanese language, we still use Portuguese vocabulary in Japanese. "Arigato" and "Obrigado" for example, and many others. Recently I found “Piri piri” means a very spicy sauce, or “Castella” and “Tempura” there are many, many words across our vocabularies because the two cultures and countries love each other. So, maybe there are some sensitivities we have in common – to nature, to the community – and a museum can show these sympathies.





And talking of these linguistic connections, have you found parallels within architectural language?

Yes, yes! For one thing, the love for ceramics. Here, we used a white ceramic for the roof of the building and so ceramics are very important for Portuguese architecture. There’s the white and blue tile, and we Japanese also have white and blue ceramics, so maybe some common aesthetic exists between the two countries and by showing the white beautiful ceramic of the roof we wanted to show this. The quality of the roof ceramic is amazing – its edge is very sharp, and it is handmade to a very precise quality which reminds me of Japanese craftsmanship. It is a white, simple colour that catches the colour of the plants, the colours of the neighbours, and the colour of the sky – it’s white, but behind the white we can find many, many colours.


Another similar relationship to Japanese architecture is perhaps the use of wood in the framing of landscape, and here you are using it to the underside of the roof. Is there a pattern of finding local materials to speak to such architectural ideas?

The soffit is formed of ash wood, a colour that reminds me of traditional Japanese buildings, while the curve reminds me of an boat – which is another similarity between the two countries, we are both sailing nations, and both eat fish! The fish are very, very important for both countries… And then, the ocean is the basis of the life of two countries and the wooden boat was very, very important for both – so the bottom of the roof reminds us of the boat: the detail is very similar, the colour is similar, and some smells might even be. These are special details, but for the two countries these aren’t special, but are part of our lives.





I also I want to ask about the landscape itself, which I know is designed by Vladimir Djurovic but he is a landscape architect you have worked with a lot on previous and ongoing projects. He works across the world, but obviously Japan has an incredibly rich understanding of landscape in relation to architecture within its own history, so how much of this understanding do you bring into this project and into your practice in general?

Vladimir and I have known each other a long time and I respect his philosophy, sensibility, and dedication to the detailed landscape. This landscape is very, very important for the Gulbenkian, the original garden at the Gulbenkian is unique and its sequence is carefully designed. So, the new Gulbenkian gardens are created as an organic sequence where we tried to avoid dead ends as much as we can – this then all acts as a promenade that can offer a new experience for visitors as well as the existing communities. This kind of experience is unique in such a city centre.


The Gulbenkian garden – as well as the collection in the main galleries – is about this fusion of historical Asian and Japanese and Chinese culture with the Western works, but also with the whole collection to the landscape itself. The building’s windows frame the city park, but it’s not one of the English picturesque so much as one of a Japanese or Chinese sequence approach, as you mention. So, thinking of the new garden layout, were you involved with Vladimir’s designs and how does your relationship work?

We have conversations about the details, because such details are very important for the architecture – whether that’s how to minimise the edge of the path, or how the bench design can merge into the environment, the bed if anything is a benches he he designed and we are very happy to see is his solution to that kind of small items. And the green is of course important, that is the lesson from traditional Japanese gardens is how the elements of the garden totally merge into green.





To go back inside the building, another main element of your project, architecturally is the depth of your new basement. It is quite a massive architectural undertaking to dig down so far, to open up such new spaces. Can you speak about the quality of these galleries, which also have a little natural light coming in?

It is a huge part of the design. We had this spine in the museum, and it is defined by natural light. Normally, such a large volume is separated from the environment, but this building is not at all – every space is connected to natural light, and it brings new solutions for such a big volume. Then, to bury the exhibition spaces underground is good for the gardens, it means we can maximise the gardens and offers another new solution for museum building.


Internally, the public pathways, the staircase, and entrance have a lot of industrial material qualities to them. There is aluminium and steel showing, and even the latter introduction of the earthquake resistance structure is not hidden – is it important to you to express such elements in an honest way?

Those kinds of materials are industrial, but at the same time can also be very delicate. For example, by using the metal for delicate screens, we want to create a juxtaposition of past and the future. It is the total opposite to a heavy wall, but is the kind of transparent screen we might find in historic Japanese architecture – which have bamboo and rice paper screens – it is a contemporary version and we want to show the potential of such industrial materials. This is a kind of interpretation of traditional Japanese buildings which are designed around ideas of relationships. “Relationship” is a key word for this project – we don't want to make a new building, we just wanted to add relationships to the building and the materials we chose for this building can create new solutions and new relationships.

And it’s also important to show honesty. We don’t want to hide the structure, or the new earthquake reinforcement. Honesty is important because it adds another layer to the building and these layers get passed down. The new structures also show this layering, and it gives depth to the building. I think buildings are a kind of media to show our history and if we hide that kind of structural reinforcement, most people cannot understand the meaning or the history.