Kengo Kuma: Furniture That Blends into the Surroundings

Although the architecture of Kengo Kuma has become well-known throughout the world, few people know that he also independently designs almost all of the furniture to accompany his architecture. Time & Style hosts the first European exhibition of furniture he has designed for projects over the last 10 years, which also has been commercialized together with Time & Style.

In design and architecture history people such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh or Le Corbusier have comprehensively designed buildings, interiors, and furniture altogether. In this modern era, Kengo Kuma also aims to design his furniture from scratch, just like the greatest architects of the past, while he is also attempting to make new discoveries in architecture. He is quite a unique person in the field of contemporary architecture, defining and designing both buildings and furniture with a single concept thus creating comprehensive architecture.

A remarkable point of Kengo Kuma’ s furniture design is that he explores the themes of Japanese traditional lifestyle, tools and techniques through his designs. He reinterprets the Japanese lifestyle and traditional skills, creating contemporary furniture design.

Time & Style has been working together with Kengo Kuma and Associates since 2009, manufacturing furniture for his many new projects over the last 10 years. His furniture has a good style of design, functionality and durability so that it can be used not only with his own architecture but also more widely in ordinary homes. There have been more ongoing projects over the last 10 years from 2009 to 2019, and a wider variety of furniture has been released including chairs, sofas, tables and coffee tables, achieving further diversity and flexibility.

I also want tables and chairs to be light and delicate. Such elegant pieces are content to play a supporting role and never attempt to steal the spotlight. The starring roles are performed by our human bodies or by the food or drinks we place on the table. To respect and complement these living entities, I want furniture to be as understated as possible. ̶ Kengo Kuma

Portrait credits to J.C.Carbonne