In 2015, the Japanese government chose Kengo Kuma to design the new national stadium in Tokyo, the arena which will form the centerpiece of the city’s 2020 Olympic Games. …Now, with the Olympics on the horizon, designboom visited the site to document the completed stadium and its surroundings. … ‘The facade consists of overlapping, multi-layered eaves,’ explains Kengo Kuma’s office. ‘The underside of each eave is covered with small-diameter wood louvers in an effort to express the tradition of beautiful eaves in Japanese architecture in an appropriate contemporary manner. The roof has a truss structure which combines steel beams and laminated lumber with a medium cross-section, utilizing the axial stiffness of wood to minimize deformation of the roof trusses due to wind or earthquakes.’