Chain reaction

''It has been very humbling; the earthquake showed us that if we don't respect nature, architecture has no meaning at all," says award-winning architect Kengo Kuma, explaining a bittersweet irony.

The tsunami that struck the Tohoku coastline and triggered a catastrophic nuclear incident at Fukushima following the earthquake of March 11 last year, has, he believes, unleashed a wave of creativity within Japan, one founded on a renewed appreciation of traditional values and environmental sustainability.

"It fundamentally changed the way people look at culture and architecture, and how the two work together," Kuma says. "Ever since the big earthquake in 1923, Japanese construction has copied Western cities such as New York and London, but this recent earthquake has taught me that that kind of city is not strong enough in the face of the amazing power of nature."

He says the earthquake has changed the sort of design projects his Tokyo office takes on.

"We now try to do smaller projects - for children and elderly people, for example - and try to find projects that relate to the lives of people in the villages," says Kuma, who is renowned for contemporary designs including the Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Centre and the Nezu Museum in Tokyo. More recently, he has been collaborating on a community centre for the elderly in Rikuzentakata, a city that was almost obliterated by the tsunami. His proposed curved-wood lattice structure, inspired by the lotus leaf, will use local wood assembled by carpenters from neighbouring Kesennuma.

Kuma worked in Tohoku, the region that occupies the northeast part of Honshu Island, as a young architect in the 1990s, when building projects in Tokyo had all but dried up. He says he was deeply moved by the highly skilled craftsmen he met who "went about their work quietly and humbly, almost unnoticed". After the earthquake, concerned about the loss of such skills, he founded the East Japan Project, a collaboration between designers and traditional craft artisans. The watchword is "locality", which Kuma says encompasses everything about a place: its climate, culture, people and industry. Profits go towards teaching the next generation of artisans traditional crafts.

Chidori furniture, inspired by the joint system of an old toy that was created in the town of Hida Takayama, is an example of the East Japan Project's development initiatives. Timber sticks, made by carpenters in Tohoku, feature junction details that enable combinations of modular units to be assembled into, for example, tables or shelving, without the need for nails or metal fittings. Another product is the Naruko kokeshi bottle cap, which features a handmade wooden cap - shaped like the head of a traditional kokeshi doll - made by a craftsman in Naruko, Miyagi prefecture.