Mitopoiesi del chiaro di luna nell’opera di Kengo Kuma

A Moon-Viewing Mythopoeia in Kengo Kuma’s Work - This article interprets the work of the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma in reference to cross-temporal instances rooted in a primordial past while projected toward scenarios of technological advancement. The contemporary/ancestral topic is explored through the lens of three critical nuclei, place, time, and matter, of particular relevance in Kuma’s creative poetics and respectively engaging the confluences of specificity and globalization, tradition and innovation, materiality and vocation. The three critical nuclei are then intersected with three characteristic operations of Kuma’s practice, “emanating,” “unraveling,” “particlizing.” A foundational mythopoeia is interpolated based on both Kuma’s appropriation of the spatial composition of the Katsura Detached Palace and his claim of an anti-objectual architecture as a form of philosophical exploration of the world through design. Finally, the proposed mythopoeia is characterized for the aspiration to a material composition of place and time capable of interfacing subject and world, or consciousness and matter. Throughout the text, multiple relevant projects are associated to specific segments of the critical analysis.