It happens with the finest of masters that the footprint they leave is silent but indelible. Hence, in the very different trajectories of Kengo Kuma and Riken Yamamoto, one can track the teachings of Hiroshi Hara, who understood practice, reflection, and pedagogy in equal measure. He tackled the tenets of a radical architecture and applied them to the megastructures that he is best known for, namely the Umeda Sky building in Osaka and the station in Kyoto, but he is also the author of an extensive body of research based on surveys conducted in vernacular settlements in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia, which strongly marked generations after him.