Botond Bognar is a professor and Edgar A. Tafel Endowed Chair in Architecture at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is an internationally recognised scholar of contemporary Japanese architecture and urbanism. He has lectured all over the world and has a long list of publications to his credit. Among his most recent books are Beyond the Bubble: The New Japanese Architecture (London: 2008), Material Immaterial: The New Work of Kengo Kuma (New York: 2009), and Kengo Kuma - Portland Japanese Garden (New York: 2019; co-­authored with Balázs Bognár).