First Look

Behold Rock-Star Architect Kengo Kuma's Love Song to Oregon Forests

The Portland Japanese Garden is about to unveil a $33.5 million architectural ode to nature and Japanese culture.

By Elise Herron March 21, 2017

The first steps into the new Cultural Village unveil the Umami Café (a traditional Japanese teahouse) to the left, the Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center to the right, and a garden house in the background (where horticulture workshops will take place). The small plaza in the center is called the Tateuchi Courtyard. According to architect Kengo Kuma, it “serves as a connector of different programs, [where] visitors can feel the beauty of the mountain in the space, which reflects the beautiful Oregon landscape.”

Illustrations by Kengo Kuma and Associates

Living roofs, while helping make all of the new buildings LEED certified, also provide a more fluid transition from roof to forest in a design sense. Kuma, who won the architectural bid for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics’ National Stadium, says, “working with the Garden has influenced my approach to future projects. For example, the National Stadium in Tokyo will be rich in vegetation, evoking a feeling of forest in the city.”

Illustrations by Kengo Kuma and Associates

Space is an important theme in Kuma’s designs. The glass walls in the all-new Cultural Village buildings slide completely open—as is pictured in this rendering of the learning center. And in every building, strips of cedar are deliberately spaced at non-uniform intervals (building crews followed Kuma’s to-the-millimeter measurements) which Kuma says aims to stretch visitors to “enjoy the space between the buildings.”

Illustrations by Kengo Kuma and Associates

The view from the new Jordan Schnitzer Japanese Arts Learning Center’s entrance, where an upscale gift store lies out of sight to the right, and a small, Japanese-style urban garden to the left.

Illustrations by Kengo Kuma and Associates

Renderings of the second-story library in the Jordan Schnitzer Learning Center reveal Kuma’s penchant for using natural Pacific Northwest materials in his design—pairing local materials, like Port Orford cedar and white oak, with Japanese craftsmanship. Says Kuma, “we often use wood because of its softness and warmness, which we selected carefully from Oregon forests.”

Illustrations by Kengo Kuma and Associates

Portland's Umami Café puts the city on an exclusive map, as the third, and latest, in the Kuma-designed chainlet of traditional Japanese tea cafes. (The others are in Tokyo and Paris.) The ceilings are clad in Tyvek (a synthetic, polyethylene fiber)—meant to evoke the look of rice paper used in shoji screens.

Illustrations by Kengo Kuma and Associates

The Umami Café’s traditional Japanese tea service dates back to 16th century Japan and a practice called wabi-cha, envisioned by Zen scholar Sen no Rikyù. The Garden’s retail manager and buyer Ashley McQuade explains wabi-cha as “a path to enlightenment through the simple act of sharing a bowl of tea among friends in the spirit of peace and harmony.”

Photography by Aaron Lee

A feat of engineering beauty, the new Castle Wall—185 feet long and 18.5 feet high—is made of more than 800 tons of Baker Blue granite from a quarry outside Baker City, Oregon. The wall, located against the steep perimeter of the Cultural Village—a backdrop, if you will—was built using traditional Japanese hand tools and techniques, and gravity alone holds these boulders in place. Suminori Awata, a 15th-generation Japanese master stonemason, is the genius behind the medieval addition.

Photography by Bruce Foster

The Portland Japanese Garden has long been a popular destination for townies and tourists alike. On Sunday, April 2, the park is set to accrue yet more acclaim. On that day, the gates open to the Garden's new Cultural Village—a 3.4-acre, $33.5 million expansion designed by superstar architect Kengo Kuma (the mind behind the redesigned Shizuku by Chef Naoko and a soon-to-come national stadium at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics).

Kuma's expansion project—launched in 2011 and entailing close partnership with the Garden's curator and master craftsman Sadafumi Uchiyama—adds three buildings and three gardens (a bonsai terrace among them), all clustered near a new entrance point to the Garden's nine-acre swath of Washington Park.

Says Kuma, "Japanese gardens play a big role in busy environments. They can introduce a new way of thinking, a particular philosophy of contemplation, and deep connection to nature.”

Whatever your reason for escaping city bustle, the Garden's serene new digs are a superlative destination—as this slideshow attests.

Garden Design, Nature

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Behold Rock-Star Architect Kengo Kuma's Love Song to Oregon Forests

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