[6] Kengo Kuma & Associates employs over 300 architects in Tokyo, China (Beijing and Shanghai) and Paris, designing projects of diverse type and scale throughout the world.

Kuma lectures extensively and is the author of numerous books and articles discussing and criticizing approaches in contemporary architecture.

He utilizes technological advancements which can challenge unexpected materials, such as stone, into providing the same sense of lightness and softness as glass or wood.

Transparency is a characteristic of Japanese architecture; I try to use light and natural materials to get a new kind of transparency.” [8] In many of Kuma’s projects, attention is focused on the connection spaces; on the segments between inside and outside, and one room to the next.

When dealing with stone work, for example, Kuma displays a different character from the preexisting buildings of solid, heavy, traditional masonry construction.

Instead his work surprises the eye by slimming down and dissolving the walls in an effort to express a certain “lightness” and immateriality, suggesting an illusion of ambiguity and weakness not common to the solidity of stone construction.

Collaborating with Japanese craftsmen specialized in wood, earth or paper, he helped in maintaining the associated building techniques while modernizing them, bringing his know-how in modularity.

[9] Key projects include the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo, Bamboo Wall House in China, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) Group's Japan headquarters, Besançon Art Center in France, and one of the largest spas in the Caribbean for Mandarin Oriental Dellis Cay.

With this choice of material and construction, a new kind of transparency emerges; one that not only frames nature the way a glass curtain wall would but also deeply relates itself to the mountainside.