kengo kuma honored with andrée putman lifetime achievement award 2027

KENGO KUMA RECEIVES THE 2027 ANDRÉE PUTMAN AWARD

Kengo Kuma will receive the Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2027 Créateurs Design Awards ceremony in Paris. Presented on January 16th, 2027, at the Shangri-La Paris, the award recognizes Kuma’s more than three-decade-long career and his continued exploration of the relationship between architecture and nature, material, and Japanese tradition.

Born in Yokohama in 1954, Kuma founded Kengo Kuma & Associates in Tokyo in 1990 before opening a Paris office in 2008. Over the years, his practice has developed an extensive international portfolio, ranging from the V&A Dundee in Scotland to the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo. His recent projects also include the Saint-Denis Pleyel station in Paris, completed in 2024.

‘In my design practice, I consider myself a long-distance runner. I believe the most important thing is to keep running over the long term with a single goal in mind: achieving harmony between humans and nature. Writing is also a vital part of this journey; the ideas that come to me while running often take the form of essays and books. More than anything, I am honored that the Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the entirety of everything I do,’ says Kengo Kuma.

Kengo Kuma portrait | image ©Designhouse

ARCHITECTURE BETWEEN TRADITION AND THE NATURAL WORLD

The announcement frames the Japanese architect’s work around a question that has remained central to his practice: how architecture might restore a relationship between people and the natural world. The Andrée Putman Lifetime Achievement Award acknowledges the broader trajectory of that pursuit across architecture, writing, teaching, and design.

Alongside his architectural practice, Kuma has served as a professor at the University of Tokyo since 2009. His work continues to move between contemporary construction and references to Japanese architectural traditions, with an emphasis on material expression and the relationship between buildings and their surroundings.

‘For more than three decades, Kengo Kuma has asked how architecture can restore the relationship between people and the natural world, and he has answered on every continent. Our members chose to honor not a single building but the entirety of that pursuit, in the spirit of dialogue between tradition and modernity that Andrée Putman herself embodied,’ says Yuri Xavier, Co-Founder of the Créateurs Design Awards.

Tokorozawa Sakura Town Kadokawa Culture Museum | image ©Forward Stroke Inc.