Archinect - News

Architect Shigeru Ban named 2024 Praemium Imperiale laureate

2024-09-10T15:35:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban has been named the 35th Laureate of the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Award. The 67-year-old architect, originally from Tokyo, follows in the footsteps of Francis Kéré as the latest recipient in the Architecture category, after an eventful two years that have seen multiple installations of his innovative emergency shelters through the Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN), along with completed projects for Tiffany & Co. and the Toyota City Museum, among other notable achievements. Ban's humanitarian work began in the 1990s, with notable efforts like his paper tube shelters in Rwanda and his involvement with disaster relief after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in Japan, which inspired him to establish VAN in 1995.

The Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park by Shigeru Ban. Photo: Satoshi Nagare.

Ban, who established his own namesake firm in Japan back in 1985, is highly regarded not only for his humanitarian efforts but also for key projects such as the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2010), ...

Shigeru Ban on design, ethics, and constraints

2024-07-02T12:03:00-04:00

Q: Is there a design ethic? A: I just hate wasting material, time, and energy. When I started developing structures with humble, recycled, reusable material in the middle of the ’80s, no one—including myself—was considering any ecological and environmental problems. I just do not waste anything.

The Eames Institute's Kazam! Magazine in conversation with Shigeru Ban.

Your next job could be with humanitarian champions Shigeru Ban Architects

2024-05-31T11:18:00-04:00

Following our previous look at an opening for an Exhibition Designer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for an Architect at Shigeru Ban Architects.

The role, based in New York City, calls for an individual with 6 to 10 years of experience, working to develop documents for cultural, community, and residential projects. The practice is particularly interested in candidates who have worked on projects that are “inventive, carefully detailed, with well-integrated building systems.”

Related on Archinect: Shigeru Ban team constructs Paper Log House prototype in wildfire-ravaged Maui. Image courtesy Hawaii Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering

Why the role interests us

The open role at Shigeru Ban Architects offers us the opportunity to profile a selection of recent projects by the acclaimed practice, who often experiment with materiality in addition to undertaking activist work with reli...

Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House opens at The Glass House with the help of Cooper Union architecture students

2024-04-17T06:00:00-04:00

Archinect has received first photos of Shigeru Ban Architects’ new collaborative installation project with students from The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

A product of this semester’s Building Technology course, Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House honors the 75th anniversary of one of America’s foremost examples of modernism with a special nine-month run that began this week, April 15th, and will run until December 15th.

Students from The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union cut and sort components for the Paper Log House’s top connector in the school workshop. Video still by Hudson Lines

Students slot preassembled sections of paper tube walls into crenelated base panels along the perimeter of the floor. Video still by Hudson Lines

Working together with a team from the Pritzker Prize winner’s New York office, a group of 39 students engaged in a two-day assembly process that created a 13.5 by 13.5-...

Shigeru Ban and the Cooper Union to exhibit Paper Log House at The Glass House's 75th anniversary

2024-02-05T19:37:00-05:00

Shigeru Ban Architects have announced a special project that will help commemorate the 75th anniversary of the realization of Philip Johnson’s soon-to-be restored Brick House, the smaller outbuilding included at the site of the landmarked Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut.

The firm made public its plans for a collaborative design-build with students from The Cooper Union Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, via LinkedIn.

The project will be enacted on the Glass House grounds beginning April 15 and extending to the 15th of December of this year for public exhibition. On display will be the same Paper Log House prototype Ban and his Voluntary Architects’ Network have deployed recently in Turkey, Morocco, Japan, and Ukraine. Ban says his team will work with a group of 36 students to realize the prototype, marking its first North American installation in six years.

Johnson of cou...

Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects' Network pitch in on earthquake relief efforts in western Japan

2024-01-11T16:58:00-05:00

Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) are once again in action deploying their patented Paper Partition System in the wake of the recent 7.7 magnitude quake that struck western Japan in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

The indoor privacy system that the Pritzker Prize winner first devised in the late 1980s and deployed later in response to the 1995 Kobe earthquake was installed recently at a gymnasium in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture. The Prefecture is currently home to an estimated 26,000 shelter seekers, according to local reports.

Image courtesy Voluntary Architects' Network via Facebook

The VAN’s response is thus critical towards bolstering local relief efforts in the area that continues to suffer damage as a product of the more than 60 smaller quakes that have continued as recently as two days ago — potentially displacing hundreds or even thousands more.

Image courtesy Voluntary Architects' Network via Facebook

A TED talk featuring Ban’s description of the t...

Shigeru Ban team constructs Paper Log House prototype in wildfire-ravaged Maui

2023-12-08T17:32:00-05:00

A new collaborative project between Shigeru Ban, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Architecture, and Hawaii Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering has been constructed in Maui, providing residents of the community with much-needed temporary accommodations following the aftermath of the deadly spate of wildfires that killed 97 and destroyed another 2,000 structures in August of this year.

The installation of Ban's Paper Log House housing prototype in heavily afflicted Lahaina follows previous contributions to earthquake recovery efforts in Turkey and Morocco through Ban’s nonprofit Voluntary Architects’ Network (or VAN), which was first founded in 1995.

Image courtesy Hawaii Off-Grid Architecture and Engineering

“We are so grateful to Shigeru Ban and the Volunteer Architects Network (VAN) to inspire and remind us of the compassion and creativity that architecture and architects can provide to our communities,” Hawaii Off-Grid principal David Sellers told local news outlet La...

Shigeru Ban responds to the humanitarian disaster in Morocco

2023-09-28T16:53:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects’ Network have shared news of their delivery of several Paper Log House prototypes in Morocco in response to the devastating 6.8 magnitude earthquake that displaced over 30,000 people recently, according to disaster response statistics assembled by the UN.

This is the third such deployment in the past four months and follows Ban’s contribution to the Turkish response effort after the February earthquake that destroyed more than 160,000 structures there and in Syria. The National Architecture School of Marrakech is helping Ban coordinate the delivery of the shelters, which were first used following the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.

Photo: Voluntary Architects' Network via Facebook

The structures used this year in Turkey offer slightly more permanent accommodations than past prototypes and can be constructed in just three days, with another ten or so days required for pre-installation preparation.

Photo: Voluntary Architects' Network via Face...

Shigeru Ban details post-earthquake response effort in Turkey

2023-05-19T12:29:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban Architects has released photos of the architect’s response to the humanitarian crisis plaguing Turkey following the 7.8 earthquake that destroyed over 160,000 structures while claiming the lives of more than 50,000 people there and in Syria on February 6th.

The firm had previously been on the ground since March working through its Voluntary Architects Network (or VAN) nonprofit arm to construct shelters using their patented Paper Partition System that was first utilized in the wake of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan.

The system works by first constructing a system of 2x2-meter paper tubes, over which fabric privacy curtains can be installed.

Photo: © Mert Ünal

Now, three months removed from the disaster, an effort is underway to build temporary housing using what it says are new prototype designs that improve upon the Paper Log House Ban first debuted following the 1995 Kobe earthquake and later, also in Turkey, in reaction to the devastating İzmit earthquake there in...

Shigeru Ban deploys paper partition system shelters in Turkey for earthquake victims

2023-03-03T10:49:00-05:00

Shigeru Ban Architects is operating in Turkey in response to the devastating earthquake that killed more than 50,000 across the region last month while leaving an estimated 3 million unsheltered in two countries.

The firm’s non-profit Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) released details Thursday about their recent deployment of the same Paper Partition System (PPS) temporary shelter seen in Ukraine and elsewhere in response to situations where masses of people have been displaced following earthquakes in Japan, Nepal, and two other countries.

Ban, who had previously delivered temporary Paper Log House designs to displaced persons after the devastating 1999 İzmit earthquake, pioneered the technique of installing a structure made of approximately 2x2-meter paper tubes over which fabric privacy curtains can be installed. The first PPS version was deployed in Japan in 2011 in response to the 3/11 earthquake and was later mentioned as one of several structural innovations in the citatio...

The Tokyo Toilets project will star in Wim Wenders' next film

2022-06-27T20:41:00-04:00

The fictional film will be set in a public restroom that is part of the real-life urban renewal project known as the “The Tokyo Toilet project", which involves the creation of 17 public bathrooms in key locations in the Japanese capital with designs by world renowned Japanese architects, such as Tadao Ando and Sou Fujimoto. Wenders said he was inspired by the futuristic look and unique cultural spirit of the project and decided to set his forthcoming untitled film inside one of them.

The angsty Alice in the Cities and Tokyo-Ga director said “there is something very Japanese about the idea, about the whole setting […] I almost think it’s a Utopian idea” in reference to the Nippon Foundation’s two-year-old Tokyo Toilet project, which has to date produced 17 different designs from Toyo Ito, Shigeru Ban, and Tadao Ando, among others. Production will begin in October. The film is said to center around four narratives and stars Koji Yakusho in the lead role as a Tokyo sanitation worker.

“First of all, I love architecture. In another life, I certainly want to be an architect. And I slowly realized how close the work of an architect to the work of a director really is in many ways,” he said at a press conference, referencing Ando's design in particular. “I truly feel like he is a contemporary of mine. Though we don”t meet so often, I feel a connection and I’m happy that I kno...

Shigeru Ban is on the ground helping war-torn Ukrainian refugees in Poland

2022-03-21T13:38:00-04:00

Shigeru Ban had been working with students from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology on the influx of Ukrainian refugees sheltering in a converted former supermarket in Chelm, Poland, where they were able to construct and install 319 privacy partitions over a four-day span. He now plans to send an additional 800 screens to refugees sheltering within their now war-torn country. The gesture has reportedly had a tremendous emotional impact on the wary travelers, whose plight in turn has captivated the 2014 Pritzker winner well known for working with displaced populations.

“They are called evacuees, but they are ordinary people like us,” Ban told a reporter. “They are with their family members, just like survivors of natural disasters are after emergencies. But the big difference is that Ukrainian evacuees are not with their husbands or fathers. Ukrainian men are basically banned from leaving the country. It’s sad.”

Ban and his collaborators from the Wrocław University of Sc...

The Tokyo Toilet Project: Pritzker Prize winners Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, and Fumihiko Maki among designers of new public restrooms

2020-08-17T14:36:00-04:00

Noteworthy Japanese architects, and even some Pritzker Prize laureates, are among the creators of 17 innovative public restroom designs throughout the bustling Shibuya area of Tokyo. Launched by the non-profit The Nippon Foundation, THE TOKYO TOILET project hopes to create save, clean, and appealing facilities "to make them accessible for everyone regardless of gender, age, or disability, to demonstrate the possibilities of an inclusive society."

Five of the 17 planned facilities, envisioned by Shigeru Ban, Fumihiko Maki, Masamichi Katayama/Wonderwall, and Nao Tamura, have recently opened to the public while more are expected to launch later this year and in 2021.

The Tadao Ando-designed restroom is scheduled to open on September 7th. Toilets created by Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, and Sou Fujimoto will be available next year.

Take a look at the initiative's first five releases below.

Designer: Shigeru Ban

Project description: "There are two things we worry about when entering a public r...

Shigeru Ban on not designing for a utopia that will never come

2019-10-15T19:33:00-04:00

“This moment, the beginning of the 21st century, is a big moment to change the direction — toward sustainability and disaster relief,” he said. “This will continue as the main theme of this century.” Times had changed since the Modernist era: “Those times, people believed that they would have utopia some day. But we know that it’s not true. There’s no utopia.”

Nikil Saval, writing in T Magazine profiles architect Shigeru Ban in a wide-ranging article, shedding light on Ban's American education at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and The Cooper Union, highlighting the architect's ideological disagreements with Peter Eisenman, and his love for Alvar Aalto.

Not one to consider himself a "Japanese architect," Ban explains that instead he received exposure to the open-plan, indoor-outdoor elements of design traditional Japanese architecture is known for in reverse, after they had made their way from Japan to Frank Lloyd Wright and from Wright to Southern California's budding Mid-Century Modernism scene via the Case Study Houses.

Ban says, “My Japanese influence was made through Case Study Houses by accident,” he said. “Case Study Houses have many Japanese influences: for example, the connecting inside and out, like a Japanese traditional house, and also the way to use the materials, and also the post-and-beam structure. There...

Shigeru Ban pitches paper tube chapel as temporary Notre Dame replacement

2019-07-10T12:31:00-04:00

La Croix International reports that Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has proposed a temporary chapel to be used for gatherings and religious services in the forecourt of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris while the iconic structure is restored.

The cathedral burned in April 2019, and its future has been the subject of much speculation in the ensuing months as a series of outlandish and conflicting proposals and reconstruction efforts have taken shape.

While not formally approved, Ban's chapel would be made up of wood-wrapped recycled shipping containers and tall paper tubes tied together with wooden trusses and rope. Together, the elements would create a nave capable of holding dozens of people at at time.

The temporary pavilion would be built out of wood-wrapped recycled shipping containers and paper tube columns. Image courtesy of Shigeru Ban Architects.

The vision has not been without controversy, of course. Patrick Bouchain, a French designer who has helped other major cultural insti...

Shigeru Ban unveils designs for Kentucky Owl Park whiskey distillery

2018-11-19T18:50:00-05:00

While Japanese whiskey distilleries are claiming top accolades for their finely crafted products these days, one decorated artisanal-minded Japanese master is bringing his craft to the heart of Bourbon country: Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban has been selected to oversee the planning and development of the "Kentucky Owl Park" experience in the Bluegrass State.

Image: Shigeru Ban Architects/Stoli Group

Global spirits enterprise Stoli Group, which had recently acquired the Kentucky Owl Bourbon brand, tasked Ban's firm to transform a 420-acre site at Cedar Creek Quarry into a must-see destination along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail—part tourist experience, part industrial facility complete with state-of-the-art distillery, bottling center, rickhouses for aging as well as office spaces for the corporation's American whiskey division.

Image: Shigeru Ban Architects/Stoli Group

"Shigeru Ban's vision for the site hearkens back to the 19th century with long-span steel structures that...

Shigeru Ban builds temporary shelter for flooding victims in Japan

2018-07-17T14:17:00-04:00

World-renowned architect Shigeru Ban sprang into action again in a disaster zone by setting up temporary “homes” to give flooding victims here some much-needed privacy. Ban, members of his Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN) and student volunteers used recycled paper tubes and pieces of fabric to create partitions for evacuees in the gymnasium of the Sono Elementary School in the Mabicho district on July 14.

Torrential downpours and subsequent floods and mudslides have devastated parts of Western Japan in recent weeks. With over 250 people dead or missing and more than 8 million people under evacuation order, this has reportedly been one of the country's most severe natural disasters in years.

Pritzker Prize laureate Shigeru Ban joined the relief efforts with VAN, the Voluntary Architects' Network he's leading, and his award-winning, low-cost, easy-to-assemble cardboard tube emergency shelter system to create a sense of privacy for evacuees having to spend their nights away from their flooded homes in an elementary school gymnasium in Okayama Prefecture.

"It is our mission as professional architects to make living environments better. We are just doing our job," said Ban.

Image: VAN - Voluntary Architects' Network

Image: V...

Backed by Shigeru Ban and others, artist Jae-Eun Choi envisions garden-lined bridge for Korean DMZ

2017-12-28T21:07:00-05:00

At the 2016 Venice Architectural Biennale, Ban and Choi presented a scale model of a 13-kilometer (about eight-mile), garden-lined bamboo walkway meandering between North and South Korea, elevated to protect visitors from ubiquitous DMZ landmines. Along its length would be towers for viewing nature and, every kilometer, open-air “Jung Ja” meditation pavilions designed by different architects and artists, including several reserved for North Koreans.

With support from Shigeru Ban and others, artist Jae-Eun Choi envisioned a garden-lined bridge called "Dreaming of Earth" that would meander through the Korean Demilitarized Zone, which has ironically grown into one of Asia's most significant wildlife sanctuaries. The initial proposal, which Choi and Ban presented at the 2016 Venice Biennale, includes designs by Olafur Eliasson and Sebastian Behmann, Bijoy Jain, Seung H-sang, Minsuk Cho, and artists like Lee Ufan and Lee Bul, Tadashi Kawamata, and more. Despite the current political climate, Choi is determined to make her peace project a reality.

Shigeru Ban is building shelters for a Kenyan refugee settlement

2017-07-20T13:14:00-04:00

Due to the large influx of refugees, sheet walls of many temporary houses have begun to wear out. And there are other major constraints. There’s low water supply, deforestation, and extremely hot temperatures, and a rainy season which often results in heavy flooding. Plus Kalobeyei remote location creates many obstacles. There are no commercial flights to the area, and it can take up to 3 days to get there by road for the capital, Nairobi, where some materials may have to be sourced from.

Shigeru Ban has signed an agreement with UN-Habitat to design up to 12,000 new homes in the Kalobeiyei refugee settlement site in Northern Kenya. Commissioned in response to the settlement’s rapid growth, which is expected to outnumber its original capacity of 45,000 within a year, the new housing will need to be a replicable model adaptable to the influx of refugees fleeing violence and climate change in South Sudan and Somalia.

"The key thing will be to design and construct shelter where no or little technical supervision is required,” noted Ban, “and use materials that are locally available and eco-friendly. It’s important that the houses can be easily maintained by inhabitants.”

What kind of housing will Shigeru Ban's "tallest timber hybrid" add to Vancouver?

2016-07-20T12:50:00-04:00

Details are scant, there's only one rendering, and yet according to on-the-nose-named developer PortLiving, Shigeru Ban has designed the world's tallest timber hybrid apartment complex. Called Terrace House, the sloping glass-encased, timber-framed, concrete and steel-cored building will eventually tower over Vancouver's waterfront. No word on whether this apartment complex will be adding affordable units or more luxury condominiums to Vancouver's bracingly expensive housing market.

For more on the resurgence of timber as chic building material:

A video tour of Shigeru Ban's Aspen Art Museum

2016-06-09T14:15:00-04:00

In this video that blends time lapse and slow-motion techniques to fully showcase the visual splendor of the building, director Heidi Zuckerman of the The Aspen Art Museum speaks about how the "modesty" of Shigeru Ban's signature preferred materials perfectly suited the Colorado-based institution, while Shigeru Ban explains, among other things, how he carefully designed the visitor entrance to feature a mountain view.

Here's the full video (with requisite plinky yet inspirational soundtrack):

Brute Force: Atlanta's endangered Breuer, Ban's disaster relief efforts, and a honking huge lobby for driverless vehicles on Archinect Sessions #63

2016-05-05T14:31:00-04:00

This week on the podcast, Donna, Ken and I discuss the uncertain future of downtown Atlanta's brutalist Public Library (the last building Marcel Breuer designed), how Shigeru Ban's relief efforts in Ecuador relate to his celebrity, and the emergence of a heavy-hitting lobbyist group for driverless cars in the US.

Listen to episode 63 of Archinect Sessions, "Brute Force":

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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

News pieces discussed in this show:

The campaign to save Marcel Breuer...

Shigeru Ban arrives in Ecuador to train locals in relief architecture

2016-04-29T14:25:00-04:00

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban is once more jumping into disaster-relief efforts. The cardboard-wielding starchitect traveled to Ecuador earlier this week [...] to provide architectural training and brainpower in the wake of the deadly earthquake April 16 earthquake, which has killed more than 650 people and displaced another 26,000 from their homes.

The Colegio de Arquitectos del Ecuador Provincial de Pichincha issued this statement on its website (Google-translated from the original Spanish text):

"The Association of Architects of Ecuador, Pichincha Chapter (CAE-P) and the Pan American Architecture Biennial of Quito, officially announced the arrival of the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban because of the events that took place following the seismic event occurred on April 16 in the coastal area of Ecuador. The winner of the Pritzker prize expressed his solidarity with the moment in the country and has expressed interest in visiting the affected area and provide training sessions under these circumstances in the capital city."

Shigeru Ban builds earthquake-proof homes in Nepal: "I'm encouraging people to copy my ideas. No copyrights."

2015-12-30T12:10:00-05:00

After twin earthquakes in April and May claimed 9,000 lives and left vast swathes of Nepal in ruins, survivors worried if they reused the brick rubble, they would end up with the same vulnerable, seismically unsound structures. [...] Shigeru Ban - who helped bring global attention to humanitarian architecture and continues to influence fellow architects and disaster-relief workers - devised a solution. [...] "I'm encouraging people to copy my ideas. No copyrights," Ban said.

"While Ban said he enjoys working on grand projects commissioned by privileged people, he also wants to help people who have lost their homes, and is encouraged that many architects have followed in his footsteps."

Previously in the Archinect news:

Editor's Picks #423

2015-07-13T00:47:00-04:00

Julia Ingalls explored how a firm the size of Gensler manages to maintain a cohesive studio culture. midlander wondered "when did Gensler get so big? I feel like I never heard of them until 10 years ago, then suddenly they were everywhere? Was it organic growth or have they been buying up local firms to expand?"

News
The NYT reported the Studio Museum in Harlem, will construct a new $122 million home designed by the British architect David Adjaye on West 125th Street.

SALT released Global Tools 1973-1975 (a free downloadable book) which compiles/archives the lessons of the "non-school", founded by members of a radical Italian pedagogy group from the 1970s.

One year after Operation Protective Edge, Haaretz examined what (if anything) has changed since the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, and asks "If we don't learn from our wars, are we doomed to repeat them?" +A ziz thinks "Gaza might as well be the saddest place on Earth…"

Anna Daugherty penned a eulogy for Francis Tsai, previo...

Editor's Picks #421

2015-06-24T09:24:00-04:00

Amelia Taylor-Hochberg penned What makes an artless museum?, which reviewed the February Sky-lit event/preview of the new Broad Museum. Therein she argues that it provided "an opportunity for the architecture to be treated as a relational art object, but not so it could be handled with velvet gloves". Chris Teeter commented "great article, it's worth 2 or 3 reads…" Donna Sink wrote "A meaty essay...on the Broad Museum (meat, contraceptive sponges, art, raw spectacle: it's a big topic"

Plus, Julia Ingalls explored the Role of Software vs. Vision in Architectural Employment. Derek Kaplan thought it was a "Great article on a topic that needs more discussion."

News

Charles Correa, named "India’s Greatest Architect" by RIBA, died at 84. jla-x eulogized "He was pretty great. I studied his residential developments extensively as a student...He will be missed".

Despite recovering from several major surgeries for cancer, Tadao Ando spoke with NHK World about; recent projects, the durability of...

Shigeru Ban: Beauty as a basic human need

2015-06-23T14:56:00-04:00

Aesthetics is a primary concern for Ban—not despite, but especially in humanitarian scenarios. He believes that beauty is a basic need, an aspect of a person’s dignity. Erecting beautiful, if simple, structures can ensure that a refugee camp is not labeled a slum. So, when examining available materials in Kobe, he fussed about the color of the beer crates, choosing Asahi’s more neutral plastic bins over Kirin’s glaring red crates.

Last week, Ban visited several U.S. cities on a brief lecture tour, captivating audiences with his thoughts about "the Temporary and the Monumental." Read Archinect's report from his Los Angeles lecture at LACMA here.

Between the Temporary and the Monumental: A Review of Shigeru Ban's Lecture at LACMA

2015-06-19T18:29:00-04:00

“I hate to throw things away,” explained the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban to a packed audience at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art last night. On the projection screen, one of his first works as an architect was displayed: an exhibition of the work of Alvar Aalto, who Ban cited as one of his primary influences. The exhibition was the first time Ban worked with paper tubes, which has become one of his signature strategies. “I couldn’t afford wood like Aalto,” so he turned to the large tubes that had once supported reams of tracing paper. Finding the tubes surprisingly strong, Ban began testing their viability – and the rest has become history.

Throughout the evening’s lecture, Ban spoke with refreshing humility, a quality that often seems lacking among his peers. Many of his most iconic design decisions he attributed to chance, like his use of paper. As Ban worked his way through a retrospective survey of his career, he made frequent quips that enlivened the mood a...

Shigeru Ban responds to the emergency in Nepal

2015-05-08T15:30:00-04:00

Pritzker Prize Laureate Shigeru Ban has announced plans to contribute to emergency relief efforts in Nepal after the April 25 earthquake reduced cities to rubble, killed more than 7,000, and left thousands homeless. In the short term, Ban’s firm and his relief organization Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN) will distribute simple tents—supplemented with plastic sheets donated by contractors to serve as wall partitions—and assemble them onsite as temporary shelter and medical aid stations.

According to the report, VAN aims to partner with local universities, students and architects in the coming months to work towards create stable housing once conditions have stabilized. This is not the first time that Shigeru Ban, who won the 2014 Pritzker prize, has deployed his architectural expertise to respond to emergency situations. After Christchurch, New Zealand was hit by a devastating earthquake in 2012, Ban designed a soaring cathedral out of paper tubes to temporarily shelter congregates. His firm is well-known for designing emergency housing following a massive tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.

International architecture star Shigeru Ban is a Prospect.3 no show

2014-11-11T14:40:00-05:00

Internationally renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is one of the biggest names on the roster of New Orleans' international art festival, Prospect.3. But his exhibit at Longue Vue House and Gardens is a non-starter. [...] Unfortunately, whatever plans Ban had for presenting a structure or artwork at Prospect.3 must have fallen through, because the exhibit at Longue Vue is comprised of nothing more than a sleepy selection of miniature architectural models and photos.