Luis Fernández-Galiano   I met Shigeru Ban at the best place and the best time. The Alvar Aalto Symposium was held in August of 2000 in Jyväskylä under the motto ‘architecture in the year zero,’ and if in my lecture I defended a return to order disapproving the catastrophic

Shigeru Ban   Rugby was my life in high school. I dreamed of studying architecture and at the same time playing with the rugby team of Waseda University. When I learned that the entrance exam included drawing tests, I signed up at a painter’s workshop so that I co

Riichi Miyake   Shigeru Ban is an architect of unique character; a soldier whose great resolve continues to tackle today’s world issues. Over the past quarter of a century he has brought architecture closer to human beings, by challenging the ‘supremacy’ of the arch

Shigeru Ban   Germany   With an area of 3,000 square meters, the Japan Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover is the largest paper structure ever built. Choosing paper as building material was especially appropriate to the theme of the exhibition: ‘Man, nature and technology: or

Shigeru Ban   United States   Made of shipping containers and paper tubes, the Nomadic Museum takes the concept of itinerant exhibition to the limit, because not only the works are moved from place to place, but also the building. In the year 2000, the Canadian photographer Grego

Shigeru Ban   France   Placed on the terrace of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, this pavilion was designed as Shigeru Ban’s temporary office during the construction of the museum’s new branch in Metz. After winning the competition, the administration accepted the architect’s

Shigeru Ban   New Zealand   Levantada tras un terremoto, la iglesia está construida con 86 tubos de cartón envainados en vigas de madera y 8 contenedores de transporte colocados en la base a modo de estribos. 

Shigeru Ban   Japan   Yaku island, off the southwest coast of Japan, was listed as a heritage site in 1993 because of its value as a biosphere reserve. It is particularly important for its virgin jungle filled mainly with Japanese cedar (sugi), one of the world’s oldest t

Shigeru Ban   Japan   Located by a river and surrounded by fields peppered with greenhouses, the Naked House addresses the client’s request for “a house that give us all the freedom to carry out individual activities in a shared atmosphere, within a united family.” The ho

Shigeru Ban   United States   Located in the eastern end of Long Island, in the state of New York, this house is in a forty-hectare residential community (Houses at Sagaponac), promoted by The Brown Companies together with Richard Meier to build thirty-two houses designed by prom

Shigeru Ban   Japan   Arranged on an orthogonal grid, Maison E takes up a large plot in a residential area outside Iwaki, in Japan. Since there are no distinctive urban references and there is a lot of space, the house is organized introspectively around courtyards. The f

Shigeru Ban   Sri Lanka   Located on a hilltop site facing the ocean, south of Sri Lanka, the floors, walls and ceilings of this house frame three different views. The first is the view of the ocean from the jungle in the valley, framed perpendicularly by the external corrido

Shigeru Ban   Japan   Introspectively laid out around a central courtyard, Sengokubara House is built on a site surrounded by vegetation in Hakone, a city located some one hundred kilometers southwest of Tokyo. The continuous roof, which covers the whole house with a sing

Shigeru Ban   Sri Lanka   The earthquake of 26 December 2004 caused a catastrophic tsunami that took the life of 38,000 people in Sri Lanka. One of the devastated areas was Kirinda, a small community of Islamic fishermen located in the southern coast of the country. The recon

Shigeru Ban   China   The Hualin Temporary Elementary School in the Chinese city of Chengdu replaces the old building that was torn down by the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008. The structure, made of paper tubes, was assembled by thirty architecture students of Keio Univer

Shigeru Ban   Japan   After a natural disaster, and until temporary housing is built, those affected take shelter in public buildings or large facilities like sports centers. To address the problems of lack of privacy and overcrowding that emerge in these situations, the

Shigeru Ban   Japan   Built with shipping containers, this community was created to address the shortage of housing after the earthquake of 2011 in Onagawa, in Miyagi Prefecture. Unlike the usual emergency units, which need a lot of flat land for construction, this projec

Shigeru Ban   Philippines   This is the temporary shelter built in Cebu, Philippines, following the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan (locally called Yolanda) in November of 2013. This project is the fourth version of a system of temporary shelters, first developed after the 1995 K

Shigeru Ban   France   A large tent-like structure shapes the new outpost of the Centre Pompidou in Metz, 300 kilometers from Paris in the northeast of France. A series of stacked volumes accommodates the museum program under this enclosure. This duality between regular an

Shigeru Ban   South Korea   Under the structure formed by 21 tree-like timber columns, the new building at the Haesley Nine Bridges Country Club – in the South Korean city of Yeoju – serves an 18-hole golf course. The program is divided into two formally and materially differen

Shigeru Ban   United States   Hermético desde la distancia pero translúcido en la cercanía, el edificio abriga bajo una envolvente tejida de madera seis galerías expositivas y un jardín de esculturas.

Shigeru Ban   Switzerland   On a site measuring 1,000 square meters, beside the Sihl Canal in Zurich, rises this seven-story block that is meant to be the seat of a local enterprise offering multimedia services and built with a single wooden structure that is the largest of its

Shigeru Ban   France   A large glass spheroid goes up at the end of Seguin Island, by the River Seine, marking a new cultural landmark west of the metropolitan area of Paris. These grounds, birthplace of the automobile industry in France, are transformed into the flagship