This is the story behind the Fuji Kindergarten, well known from the TED talk, "The best kindergarten you've ever seen.” In this lecture, we will present several new and ongoing projects which evolved from the philosophy that the human being is designed to be a part of the environment. We are waterproofed. Architecture is not just a shelter but also the setting to merge humans with this planet.
Takaharu Tezuka is an architect, founder of Tezuka Architects, and Professor at the Tokyo City University. Tezuka received his undergraduate degree from the Musashi Institute of Technology and his graduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Following four years at Richard Rogers, Tezuka founded Tezuka Architects with Yui Tezuka. Tezuka taught at the Musashi Institute of Technology from 1996-2008, and at the Tokyo City University since 2009.
Tezuka Architects has received a number of awards, including the Prize from the Architectural Institute of Japan for Design for the Fuji Kindergarten, awards from the the Japan Institute of Architects for the Fuji Kindergarten and Sora no Mori Clinic; the Architectural Review Award for the Echigo-matsunoyama Museum of Natural Science, and the Good Design Gold prize for the Soejima Hospital and Asahi Kindergarten.
Tezuka Architects work was featured in the 2004 Venice Biennale of Architecture and the 2013 Carnegie International. Recent publications include: Takaharu + Yui Tezuka Architecture Catalogue 1-3, TOTO Publishing; Takaharu + Yui Tezuka NOSTALGIC FUTURE ERINNERTE ZUKUNFT, Jovis, 2009; and Tezuka Architects: The Yellow Book, edited by Thomas Sherman & Greg Logan, Jovis, 2016.