On the occasion of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, ACP Art Capital Partners – Palazzo Franchetti invites one of the most innovative and appreciated architects on the international scene. Built on wooden piles, the historic Palazzo Franchetti, home to ACP, is the ideal location to admire Kengo Kuma's vision of architecture and sustainability. There are approximately 22 models of the Japanese architect on display here.

The way Kengo Kuma approaches materials is a key point of his originality. Born in Yokohama in 1954, the Japanese architect considers the world itself a material and studies each site of his projects in detail before making sketches, trying to authentically understand the places and create architecture that is not only in dialogue with the environment, but also rooted in space and time. Kuma believes that materials are inextricably linked to place. «Through the material we can learn to know the place and get closer to its specificity. By becoming friends with the materials, I was able to learn the most important things,” he says.

His design approach is often inspired by the past and is certainly structural in many respects, but at the same time it is also tactile, sensorial and sometimes sensual. His sensitivity includes rhythm and flow , typical elements of music. Buildings designed by Kuma often have an unexpected lightness or type of movement that he attributes to his musical concept process. Avoiding the use of concrete as much as possible, he creates works that seem to rest delicately on the ground, sometimes seeming evanescent or even ambiguous.

Kuma calls himself a “materialist” in the physical sense of the term. His interactive search for new and (sometimes) ancient building materials made him realize that there is a wealth of new and different objects and materials waiting to be discovered.