Lecture Series: Hiroto Kobayashi

Do-It-Anyway: Place, Tectonics, and Time

This lecture looks to the potential of technology and of socially driven design. Alongside his work in practice, Hiroto Kobayashi (external link)  studies the social contribution of architecture and urban design, and he has spent the last several years working on rural revitalization and disaster response. Most recently his work focuses on the development of a self-build construction system using plywood that makes use of modern construction technology that needs no technical skills to assemble. This work - the Veneer House - is used in disaster relief and children’s education, and has been applied around the world, beginning with its first use after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011.

Hiroto Kobayashi studied architecture and urban design at Kyoto University and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD). He worked with Nikken Sekkei and Norman Foster and Partners as an architect. He was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the GSD in 1999 and 2000, where he received a Doctor of Design in 2003. He is a founding partner of Kobayashi Maki Design Workshop (external link)  (KMDW), an architectural and urban design firm based in Tokyo since 2003, and was a representative of Skidmore Owings and Merrill in Japan between 2003 and 2022.