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NOTE THE CHANGE IN TIME FOR THE APRIL 12 LECTURE. The lecture begins at 6:30 p.m. ET.

Our 2020-2021 lecture series continues on April 12, 2021, 6:30 p.m. ET (not 6:00 p.m.), with a lecture featuring Kengo Kuma and Balazs Bognar, . The lecture is sponsored by and is free and open to the public.

Kuma and Bognar will lecture on “Practice of Nature: The Nature of Our Practice at Kengo Kuma & Associates.” With introductory remarks by founder Kengo Kuma, this lecture by partner Balazs Bognar will look at the methods by which the office tests and develops its work.

Using projects related by architectural aims and material detail, Bognar will discuss Kengo Kuma & Associates’s approach of building a body of ideas via evolution and not revolution. Each project represents an iteration aiming to understand our rich relationships to the environment. Featured projects will therefore be linked not chronologically but by conceptual genealogy, grouped by fundamental strategy, tracing from small pavilion experiments with big implications to larger, more complex examples of architecture.

This is a reflection on design as a practice of ideas, a practice of relating to locations, a practice of making with nature.

Kengo Kuma established Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990. He completed his master’s degree in architecture at the University of Tokyo in 1979 and served Columbia University as Visiting Scholar from 1985 to 1986. Kuma taught at Keio University from 2001 to 2008 as professor, and in 2009 he was installed as professor at the Graduate School of Architecture, University of Tokyo.

Balazs Bognar is an American architect and partner at Kengo Kuma & Associates in Tokyo, Japan, with licenses in the U.S. and NCARB certification. He has been working directly with Kengo Kuma to oversee the office’s North American projects since 2007.

The lecture will be livestreamed. Connect to the Zoom: https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/94441802166

For disability-related accommodations for the College of Architecture and Design’s virtual events, please contact the college’s event coordinator, Jennifer Flatford, at jflatford@utk.edu or 865-974-6714, at least three weeks in advance of the event.