The spring 2010 Oscar Ekdahl Memorial Lecture of the Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and Design will be given by two distinguished Japanese architects.

Kazuhiro Kojima and Kazuko Akamatsu

will speak at 3:30 p.m. Friday, March 26, 2010, in Forum Hall of the K-State Student Union. The lecture is open to the public without charge.

In 1986, a group of seven people, including Kazuhiro Kojima and Yasuyuki Ito, enrolled in the Tokyo University Graduate School doctorial course and jointly established a firm named Coelacanth. Achievements included winning first prize in the international competition for the Osaka International Peace Center in 1990, the Utase Elementary School in 1995, and receiving the Design Prize of the Architectural Institute of Japan in 1997. The office was renamed C+A in 1998. Then in 2005, the firm reorganized into CAt (C+A Tokyo) and CAn (C+A Nagoya). From offices in both Tokyo and Nagoya, the firms design architecture locally and internationally, based around four partners: Kazuhiro Kojima and Kazuko Akamatsu (CAt), and Yasuyuki Ito and Susumu Uno (CAn).

According to Librairie d’Architecture, “Kazuhiro Kojima, in partnership with Kazuko Akamatsu of CAt, works with rather unusual strategies as the driving force of his projects. Kojima doesn’t use form as a starting point; instead, his buildings are the outcome of situating space itself at the centre of discourse, plus concepts linked to the fluidity and instability of the phenomena that go to form a building. The fluidity and instability of life and of space itself are concepts rooted in the traditional Japanese culture Kojima reinterprets and manipulates in a contemporary way. The outside of one of his buildings is, therefore, the secondary expression of what has given rise to the inside.”

Kazuhiro Kojima was born in Osaka and graduated from the Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University. He completed the master course of architecture at the University of Tokyo where he was also a research associate.  In addition to being a CAt partner, he is also a professor at the Tokyo University of Science and a visiting professor at Kyoto Institute of Technology.

Kazuko Akamatsu was born in Tokyo and is a graduate of the Department of Housing, Faculty of Home Economics, Japan Women’s University. As a CAt partner, she is also a lecturer at Nippon Institute of Technology, Kobe Design University, Nara Women’s University and Hosei University.

Their major projects include the Uto Elementary School (2009), the JFIC Library in Tokyo (2008), Grains Shimomeguro in Tokyo (2007), Mihama-Utase Elementary School (which received a prize for excellent architecture from the city of Chiba in 2007), the House YK/Islands in Chiba (which won a design contest for Xyloid Architectural Space in 2006), Space Block Nozawa, Tokyo (2005), and Gunma International Academy in Gunma (which received an American Wood Design Award in 2005). Their work has also been exhibited and published widely.

Founded nearly 40 years ago as a memorial honoring Topeka architect and KSU alumnus Oscar Ekdahl, the Ekdahl Lectures bring practitioners, teachers, critics, theorists and artists to the campus for interaction with students, faculty and alumni. A concern for issues affecting the quality of the physical environment and the leadership roles played by the speakers characterize the Ekdahl series, which is meant to inform and to challenge, to reinforce and to complement the educational programs of the College of Architecture, Planning and Design.

Attendance at the lecture can be submitted as continuing education credit by design professionals by contacting Diane Potts.

For more information, contact:
Vladimir Krstic, 785.532.5953
Diane Potts, 785.532.1090