Kengo Kuma & Associates Unveil Earth | Tree Installation at Copenhagen Contemporary

Kengo Kuma & Associates (KKAA) have opened Earth | Tree, a site-specific installation at Copenhagen Contemporary in Denmark, built from Douglas fir timber, handmade bricks, and natural light. The project, which runs from March 28, 2026 through February 21, 2027, is rooted in the Japanese concept of komorebi and marks KKAA’s first exhibition at an art center in Scandinavia.

Earth | Tree occupies Hall 4 of Copenhagen Contemporary, a former industrial space on the city’s Refshaleøen peninsula. Developed in collaboration with Danish wood manufacturer Dinesen, the installation transforms the raw hall into a layered architectural landscape where visitors experience space through smell, touch, movement, and shifting light. The project was led by KKAA partner Yuki Ikeguchi, working alongside team members Asger T. Taarnberg, Nicolas Guichard, and Yasemin Shiner.

What Is the Earth | Tree Installation by Kengo Kuma and Associates?

At the center of Earth | Tree, a suspended structure made from handcrafted Douglas fir elements defines the spatial experience. The timber system filters daylight through its permeable assembly, casting shifting patterns of light and shadow across the floor below. This effect references komorebi (木漏れ日), a Japanese word describing sunlight as it passes through tree canopies. Few other languages have an equivalent term, but the bodily experience is universal: the calm, dappled warmth of standing beneath a large tree.

The installation is grounded by the earthy tones of Petersen Tegl bricks, which form the base surfaces. Overhead, the Douglas fir structure produces an atmosphere that shifts throughout the day as natural light enters from different angles. Lighting by Anker & Co supplements the daylight, and textiles by Kvadrat add a tactile layer to the spatial experience. Engineering support came from Buro Happold.

The result is a composition that reads less as a fixed architectural object and more as an evolving atmosphere. Visitors walk through it rather than look at it, making it one of the more physically immersive Kengo Kuma installation projects of recent years.

Kengo Kuma’s Philosophy of Gentle Architecture

Earth | Tree is rooted in what Kengo Kuma calls “gentle architecture,” an approach where buildings and spatial interventions emerge through dialogue with nature, place, and the people who occupy them. Rather than imposing a form onto a site, Kuma’s practice starts with walking the site, touching its surfaces, and understanding what light and air do there before any design decisions are made.

This philosophy developed over decades. After the Japanese economic collapse of the early 1990s, Kuma left Tokyo and spent roughly ten years working on small projects in rural Japan, collaborating with local craftsmen and using locally sourced materials. Those years, which Kuma has described as the most productive of his career, shaped the material-first approach that now defines Kengo Kuma and Associates at every scale, from a rural bridge museum in Yusuhara to the 68,000-seat Japan National Stadium for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

Earth | Tree translates that philosophy into an exhibition context. The installation does not attempt to teach visitors about architecture through panels or labels. Instead, it places them inside an architectural experience, surrounded by the scent of Douglas fir, the rough texture of handmade bricks, and constantly changing light. Copenhagen Contemporary’s director Marie Laurberg noted that Kuma works with a sensitivity to nature and humanity that aligns directly with the institution’s mission of strengthening creativity through artistic encounters.

How Does Komorebi Shape the Installation’s Design?

Komorebi describes a specific quality of light: sunlight filtering through a tree canopy, producing shifting patterns of brightness and shadow on the ground. The word combines ko (tree), more (leaking through), and bi (light). It refers not just to a visual phenomenon but to a physical sensation, the warmth and calm of standing beneath a tree while sunlight flickers across your skin.

Research supports what the word implies. Studies have shown that spending time in forest environments lowers cortisol levels, reduces heart rate, and helps ease anxiety and fatigue. Earth | Tree recreates that sensation architecturally. The overhead timber structure acts as an artificial canopy, its permeable assembly allowing daylight to pass through at varying intensities depending on the time of day, weather conditions, and the viewer’s position in the hall.

Kuma has used komorebi as a design principle before. His Macdonald Public Facility Complex in France used thin fir sticks arranged in a dense grid to disperse skylight in a way that directly referenced the forest filtering effect. At Copenhagen Contemporary, the principle operates at a larger scale, turning an entire industrial hall into a single, continuous komorebi experience.

Materials and Collaborators Behind Earth | Tree

One of the defining features of Kengo Kuma and Associates architecture is the selection of materials not for their visual effect alone but for their connection to place, craft, and sensory experience. Earth | Tree follows this approach by drawing almost entirely on Danish manufacturers.

Dinesen, headquartered in Jels, Denmark, supplied the Douglas fir for the installation’s primary suspended structure. The company has been producing wide-plank flooring and timber products since 1898, making it one of Scandinavia’s oldest wood specialists. The fir elements in Earth | Tree were handcrafted rather than machine-cut, producing subtle variations in surface texture that contribute to the installation’s organic character.

Petersen Tegl, a Danish brickworks operating since 1791, provided the tiles and bricks that form the installation’s ground plane. Their products are coal-fired using traditional methods, giving each brick a slightly different color and surface finish. This irregularity reinforces the installation’s theme: architecture built from natural processes rather than industrial uniformity.

Additional contributions came from Anker & Co (lighting), Kvadrat (textiles), and Buro Happold (structural engineering). The multi-firm collaboration mirrors Kuma’s standard practice of working with local specialists rather than importing materials and techniques from abroad.

CCreate: The Exhibition Series Behind the Project

Earth | Tree is the second installment of Copenhagen Contemporary’s CCreate program, a multi-year exhibition series focused on creativity and creative processes. The first CCreate project featured British performance artist Monster Chetwynd, who transformed an 800-square-meter open studio into a participatory environment where visitors could engage in collective learning through play.

CCreate is built on the idea that creativity is an innate ability in all people, not a specialized skill limited to trained artists. Each edition invites a major international creative figure to design an installation that visitors can physically engage with, not just observe from a distance.

For the Kengo Kuma and Associates edition, a dedicated workshop zone accompanies the main installation. Visitors can shape landscapes in sand and experiment with architecture using several building systems: Tsumiki, a wooden building block designed by Kengo Kuma; Danish-produced wooden blocks; and miniature versions of brick. The workshop was developed specifically for CCreate and is designed to make architectural thinking accessible to visitors of all ages and backgrounds.

Copenhagen Contemporary (CC) operates from a converted industrial complex on Refshaleøen, a former naval base that has become one of Copenhagen’s primary cultural districts. The institution focuses on large-scale installation art, making it a natural partner for an architect whose work often operates at the boundary between architecture and spatial art.

Kengo Kuma Association Projects in Denmark

Earth | Tree is not Kengo Kuma’s first project in Denmark. The firm’s most significant completed work in the country is the H.C. Andersen Museum in Odense, which opened in 2021. Designed by the same KKAA team led by Yuki Ikeguchi, the 5,600-square-meter museum reinterprets the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen through architecture, landscape, and immersive exhibition design.

The H.C. Andersen Museum sits adjacent to the author’s birthplace in Odense’s historic center. About two-thirds of the museum is underground, with cylindrical timber pavilions above ground connected by a labyrinthine garden designed by Danish landscape firm MASU Planning. The project draws on Andersen’s fairy tale The Tinderbox, in which a tree reveals a hidden underground world. Kuma described the design approach as resembling Andersen’s own method, where a small world suddenly expands into a larger one.

A third KKAA project in Denmark is currently underway: a water culture house on Papirøen in Copenhagen, expected to open in autumn 2026. Together, these three projects, a museum, an installation, and a public bath, represent three distinct typologies through which Kuma’s material-first philosophy is being applied in a Scandinavian context.

What Makes Kengo Kuma and Associates Architecture Distinctive?

Kengo Kuma & Associates was founded in 1990 in Tokyo after Kuma’s earlier practice, Spatial Design Studio (established 1987), explored a Post-Modernist direction that Kuma later moved away from. The firm’s current identity took shape during the lean years of the 1990s, when rural commissions forced Kuma to work with what was available locally rather than specifying imported materials.

Several principles define the firm’s output. First, material selection drives the design from the earliest stage. Kuma has said that materials should not be applied to the surface of a building but should instead express the philosophy of the entire project. Second, the firm prioritizes what Kuma calls “erasing architecture,” an approach where buildings defer to their material and landscape context rather than standing as isolated objects. Third, there is a consistent attention to how light interacts with surfaces, screens, and layers, an interest rooted in Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s 1933 essay In Praise of Shadows, which Kuma has cited as a major influence.

The portfolio of Kengo Kuma associates includes cultural institutions like the V&A Dundee in Scotland and the Nezu Museum in Tokyo, transportation infrastructure like the Saint-Denis Pleyel Station in Paris, hospitality projects, and public buildings like the Japan National Stadium. Across all categories, the same principles apply: local materials, filtered light, and a deliberate avoidance of monumental scale.

How Earth | Tree Connects Japanese and Nordic Design Thinking

One of the reasons Copenhagen Contemporary selected Kengo Kuma & Associates for CCreate is the shared ground between Japanese and Nordic approaches to architecture and design. Both traditions value natural materials, restrained aesthetics, and a close relationship between built space and landscape. Both prioritize function and sensory experience over decorative display.

Earth | Tree makes this connection explicit. The installation uses Danish materials, manufactured by companies with histories stretching back to the 18th and 19th centuries, assembled according to a Japanese spatial philosophy. The Douglas fir structure references traditional Japanese timber joinery through its interlocking assembly, while the brick surfaces echo Denmark’s long building tradition in clay and fired earth.

The traditional Japanese architecture concept of komorebi provides the conceptual bridge. While few Western languages have a single word for the phenomenon, the experience it describes, filtered forest light, is equally familiar in Scandinavian culture, where forests cover roughly 65% of Sweden and 44% of Finland. The installation invites Danish and international visitors to recognize that this shared experience of nature can serve as the starting point for architecture.

Visiting Earth | Tree: Practical Information

Earth | Tree is open at Copenhagen Contemporary from March 28, 2026 through February 21, 2027. The venue is located at Refshalevej 173A, Copenhagen 1432, Denmark.

Opening Hours and Access

The exhibition is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11am to 6pm, with extended hours on Thursdays until 9pm. The venue is closed on Mondays. Copenhagen Contemporary is accessible by public transport, bike, or car, with the harbor bus providing a scenic route from the city center. The workshop zone within the exhibition is included in the general admission ticket and is designed for visitors of all ages.

The installation occupies Hall 4, one of several large industrial halls at the Copenhagen Contemporary complex. Other exhibitions may be running simultaneously in adjacent halls, making it possible to combine the Earth | Tree visit with other programming at the venue.

Key Details at a Glance

Final Thoughts

Earth | Tree is not a building. It does not keep out rain, regulate temperature, or house a program. But it does what Kengo Kuma & Associates’ best work has always done: it creates a relationship between material and light that changes how you experience the space around you. By reducing architecture to its most basic elements, the project invites visitors to pay attention to things that permanent buildings often obscure, the weight of timber, the texture of fired clay, the way light moves across a floor over the course of an afternoon.

For a practice that has completed over 300 projects in more than 20 countries, that ability to slow visitors down and make them notice their surroundings remains Kuma’s most distinctive contribution. Earth | Tree is a concentrated, room-sized version of that idea, and Copenhagen Contemporary’s industrial hall gives it the space and silence it needs to work.

All images credited to Copenhagen Contemporary and Dinesen. For more information on Kengo Kuma projects, visit the official Kengo Kuma and Associates website.

Photography: Dinesen