'Tsumiki', seven Japanese cedar stacking triangles, Kengo Kuma, Japan, 2021

Set of seven stackable shapes, made from two thin bars of Japanese cedar, bonded at a sharp angle with a simle joint to create a triangular form. At the end of each bar is a triangular cut out.

With the set is its packaging, a grey, five-sided box with a pointed top, printed with information about the product and several ideas for how to use it.

Purchased.

Kengo Kuma (b.1954) graduated with a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Japan in 1970. He studied at Columbia University, New York as a visiting scholar between 1985- 86 and established his own practice: Kengo Kuma & Associates in 1990. At the time of writing, Kuma is also a professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.

Kuma embraces sustainability as a key part of his philosophy, often using locally sourced, natural materials with a focus on a building’s harmonious relationship to its surrounding nature and culture. His practice undertakes both large international design commissions alongside small, local projects and has completed over 300 buildings. Notable ones include. Notable examples include V&A Dundee (2018) and the Japan National Stadium, Tokyo (2019).

In 2015, Kuma collaborated with musician Ryuichi Sakamoto’s forest conservation company, More Trees, to produce the Tsumiki construction set. More Trees has a similar ethos to Kuma, encouraging a connection between cities, humans and nature, ‘aiming for a society where forests and people co-exist for generations to come’. More Trees’ conservation work includes collaboration with designers, employing local craftsmen to make designed wooden products, as with the partnership with Kuma that resulted in the creation of Tsumiki.

For Tokyo design week, 2015, Kuma designed a Tsumiki temporary pavilion for a Tokyo park. He played with scale, installing a variety of different sized Tsumiki pieces, some very large but each identical in their triangular shape, with a notch in the tip. These were constructed into a pyramid, with individual pieces arranged in a semi-circle around the park. Public interaction with the wooden elements was very much encouraged.

Loose parts stacking sets are popular childhood toys worldwide. The concept of the block or brick as a childhood plaything has its roots in work done by Friedrich Froebel in the 1830s. Froebel was an educationalist who invented the kindergarten and who recognised the benefits of encouraging children to get hands on and explore, build and interact with loose blocks and shapes as a way of making sense of the world. Construction sets made up of individual, stacking blocks became popular in Europe in the 1880s with the manufacture of Richter’s stone blocks which were marketed as construction toys and encouraged children to build imitations of European architectural styles.

The wood used for making Tsumiki is FSC certified cedar from Morotsuka village, Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan.

'Tsumiki' is the Japanese word for building blocks. The designer of Tsumiki, Japanese architect Kengo Kuma recalled, ‘I have loved tsumiki my whole life, ever since I was a young boy... and my dream came true, I designed tsumiki myself, the sort which hadn't existed before.'

The toy consists of seven identical triangular shapes which can be stacked in various ways to create abstract - and non-abstracts - forms and structures. Each piece is handmade from Japanese cedar sourced from sustainably managed forest located at Morotsuka Village, Miyazaki Prefecture.

B.6-2022