Kuma graduated in architecture from the University of Tokyo, where he is currently a professor, completing his PhD in architecture at Keio University. In 1990 he founded his own practice in Japan, Kengo Kuma & Associates, opening an office in Europe in 2008. Kengo Kuma has been recognized with numerous national and international awards for his work, and among his most outstanding works are the V&A Dundee Museum, Hiroshige Ando Museum, China Academy of Arts and the Japan National Olympic Stadium.
For the new visit to Casa Batlló, he has designed the covering of the staircase at the end of the route, a spatial intervention that dresses it with a new skin. This project, developed in collaboration with the Italian illuminator Mario Nanni, pays homage to the eloquence of the use of light in the House by reinterpreting the masterful work of Gaudí.
How did you creatively face this challenge?
Conceptually relating this new staircase with the neighboring staircase of the original central patio, one of the most iconic spaces of the House, a space that represents a tribute to the Mediterranean: its light, its shadow, and the colors of its sky and its sea. . Both stairs go completely through the House and organize the main flows of the visit, and for this reason we saw the opportunity to establish a dialogue between them.
What is the relationship between both spaces?
The central patio of Casa Batlló catches the light from the outside and distributes it, in its vertical development, to all the corners of the House, however remote they may be. The gradation of the blue colors, organized from dark to light, doses the light in its vertical path, ensuring that it does not lose its tints. In the new downstairs, we wanted to talk about the brilliant use of light in an abstract way, making sure that all visitors to Casa Batlló appreciate such qualities, beyond admiring its incredible forms, crafts and symbolic nods. Said abstraction speaks to us of light as a total articulating concept, without distractions or nostalgia, and free from the colors of the House, its materials and its historical dimension.
How did you materialize this idea in a staircase so different from that of Gaudí?
We have imagined this space dressed in aluminum bead curtains. Its meticulous materiality catches the light, as if it were a fishing net, showing it to us in its forms, brightness, silhouettes, shadows… Thus, omitting the use of any other material, and with these curtains erasing the presence of the structure of the stairs, we managed to talk about light and only about light.
What other parallels can we find with the central patio?
The different shades of aluminum are organized with the lightest at the beginning of the route on the roof, gradually darkening until reaching the black that dresses the space of the old coal bunkers, in the basements. With that gradation of light, which replicates the use of color in the patio, a wordless story is spun that accompanies us throughout the journey. We start from the roof to end up in the basement, from heaven to earth, from light to shadow… and all this explained only with light as if it were a grammar typical of the House. If Casa Batlló is a tribute to the Mediterranean, our project is a tribute to the eloquence of the use of light in the House. With the singularity that we do it in a closed box, in which hardly any natural light enters
How do you talk about light in a closed space?
It was essential for us to bring on board, from an early design phase, an illuminator with whom we felt comfortable working and who could share our vision of the project and the House. For this reason we decided to involve Mario Nanni, with whom we had collaborated on multiple occasions.
Architecture and lighting have gone hand in hand throughout the development process, complementing each other with the aim of creating an experience of brightness, shadows, transparencies, silhouettes, shapes and nuances that invites us to reflect on the importance of light in the House.