Ken-ichi Kimura

Ken-ichi Kimura (木村 建一, Kimura Ken-ichi^?) (b. 1933, Fushun, China) is a Japanese environmental architect.

Kimora's main interests lie in sustainable architecture and engineering. In 1972, he designed a solar-heated house for his family, which attracted public attention after the oil crisis of 1973. Since then, he has designed several more solar houses and conducted studies on energy conservation in buildings, utilization of natural energy sources, and solar heating and cooling. He has also enjoyed a long career in academia, and has authored a variety of publications.

Ken-ichi Kimura is the father of Mari Kimura, a Japanese violinist and composer in New York.

Kimura studied architecture and building science at Waseda University in Tokyo, graduating in 1957 with a bachelor's degree in Architecture. He stayed at the University to complete a master's degree in Science, graduating in 1959. Then he joined the Solar Energy Project, and from 1960-1962 he worked as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) through the Fulbright Program, with Prof. Lawrence B. Anderson as his adviser.

After leaving MIT, he returned to Waseda University's Department of Architecture. There he worked on some architectural research projects, and obtained a Doctorate in Engineering in 1965.

From 1967-1969, Kimura worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Canadian National Research Council's Division of Building Research in Ottawa. There he worked on developing the use of computers in environmental engineering, particularly in relation to regulating buildings' heating and cooling loads.

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