Shigeru Ban

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Shigeru Ban

• There are a few ineluctable facts about
  buildings. They are expensive, time consuming and
  labor intensive to make. They are strongest if
  built from the sturdiest materials.

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• Well, no, on all counts. Japanese architect
  Shigeru Ban has built homes, pavilions and
  churches, some of them permanent, using little
  more than cardboard tubes. "I was interested in
  weak materials," says Ban, 42. "Whenever we
  invent a new material or new structural system, a
  new architecture comes out of it."

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• Brief History
• 1957
• Born in Tokyo
• 1977-80
• Studied at Southern California Institute of
  Architecture
• 1980-82
• Studied at Cooper Union School of Architecture
• 1982-83
• Worked for Arata Isozaki, Tokyo
• 1984
• Received Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper
  Union
• 1985
• Established private practice in Tokyo
• 1995-
• Consultant of United Nations High Commissioner
  for Refugees(UNHCR)
• Established VAN(NGO)
• Major Awards
• 1995

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• Ironically, Ban may be closer to the old
  modernist ideals than many who build today in
  glass and steel. He wants beauty to be attainable
  by the masses, even the poorest.

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• Ban first began to use the tubes in the '80s, in
  exhibitions. Impressed by the material's
  load-bearing capacity (he calls cardboard
  "improved wood"), he thought of them again in
  1995, after the Kobe earthquake, and used donated
  34-ply tubes to build a community hall and
  houses.

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• Working with the U.N., Ban has shipped paper log
  houses to Turkey and Rwanda. "Refugee shelter has
  to be beautiful," he says. "Psychologically,
  refugees are damaged. They have to stay in nice
  places." But it's not all about utility. Ban has
  managed to turn ugly-duckling cardboard into some
  gorgeous swans.

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• Although Ban has become an icon for advocates of
  "green" and "eco-friendly" architecture,
  MacDonald says that the real intention behind his
  work is slightly different.
• "It's really more an ideology against waste. It's
  also about invention, curiosity, discovery, and
  about tackling problems with great relish and
  with a sense of humor," he said.

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• Can you really make part of a building out of
  recycled paper? A Japanese architect recently
  became the first person in the world to do
  so.Ban Shigeru has always hated to throw
  anything away. That is why he decided to build
  things with cylinders made of recycled paper.

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• He joined forces with a manufacturer of paper
  cylinders to find how to make cylinders extra
  strong, durable, and water and fire resistant.
  The research paid off in 1993, when the
  government began permitting the use of paper
  cylinders in architectural structures.

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• Ban says he wants his buildings to respond to
  social needs. After a horrific earthquake struck
  the Kobe region in 1995, he designed Community
  Dome, a meeting place for people who were
  affected by the earthquake.

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• He and a number of volunteers erected pillars
  made out of recycled paper at the site of a
  church destroyed by the quake. The 58 pillars,
  each one 5 meters tall and 33 centimeters in
  diameter, support a beautiful oval dome, bringing
  an element of security to the victims of the
  earthquake.

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• Paper pillars are relatively cheap to make, and
  the paper is recyclable. The cylinders can even
  be beautiful. When a structure made with these
  paper pillars is demolished, the paper can be
  disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

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designed by shigeru ban, the carta screen from
cappellini is primarily constructed of recycled
material. the series of tubes is connected by two
belts in white fabric. 98.4" x 70.9"h
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a paper lounge
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a paper chair
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• Shigero Ban does cool things with materials that
  we often ignore.
• Beauty is not a raw material, but rather
  something that human beings 'grow'.
• Beauty is a human concept. Nature just creates
  stuff that works, and that is inter-related. We
  call it beautiful, like a flower, or ugly, like
  an intestine, but that is our laying on of a
  description. To nature, it is all just working
  stuff.