Kikuma Watanabe

Born in Nara Prefecture in 1971. Lives and works in Kochi and Nara Prefectures, Japan. Graduatied from Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering at Kyoto University in 1994. Left the doctoral program of the same department in 2001. While employed at Toyokazu Watanabe Architecture Studio, Watanabe served as Chairman for the Kyoto Community Design League(Kyoto CDL). In 2007, he founded D environmental Design System Laboratory.

Since 2001, he has undertaken the design and construction of earthbag architecture in Japan and India in collaboration with Tenri University. In recent years, he has created unique architecture together with local residents in such locations as Jordan, East Africa, and Thailand by blending earthbag architecture with local traditional construction methods, contributing in this way to the alleviation of poverty in these regions.

Watanabe is pursuing something he calls "Glocal Architecture", this being architecture that conciders the environment of our earth and the related probrems with attention to the special character of the local climate, natural environment, culture, and customs. Currently, while teaching as an associate professor at Kochi University of Technology, he is engaged in researh and fieldwork in various regions, aimed at returning to architecture' s biginnings to discover architecture of a different dimension.