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NEWS
SHIGERU BAN, THE PEOPLE’S ARCHITECT, WINS PRITZKER ARCHITECTURE PRIZE “SCI-Arc was really the beginning of my whole entire career… my architecture has a big influence from [my] education [at] SCI-Arc.”– Shigeru Ban, 2005
1. Metal Shutter House, 2010, New York, USA. Photo by Michael Moran 2. Paper Partition System 4, 2011, Japan. Photo by Voluntary Architects’ Network 3. Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2010, France. Photo by Didier Boy de la Tour 4. Container Temporary Housing, 2011, Onagawa, Miyagi, Japan. Photo by Hiroyuki Hirai 5. Paper Concert Hall, 2011, L’Aquila, Italy. Photo by Didier Boy de la Tour 6. Paper Concert Hall, 2011, L’Aquila, Italy. Photo by Fabio Mantovani 7. Cardboard Cathedral, 2013, Christchurch, New Zealand. Photo by Stephen Goodenough
An international jury has selected SCI-Arc alum (1977-1980) and Japanese architect Shigeru Ban as the recipient of this year’s prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. Known for his wide spectrum of work ranging from private homes and cultural projects to lowbudget and often pro-bono humanitarian efforts and disaster relief work, Ban is widely recognized for his originality, creativity, and innovative use, and reuse, of materials. Before transferring to Cooper Union, Ban had been accepted to SCI-Arc by founding director Ray Kappe, who was greatly impressed with his interview and portfolio. Ban explains, “I found out SCI-Arc was a very exciting school, so I didn’t go to Cooper Union directly, that was too soon. I spent two and a half years at SCI-Arc…it was a great opportunity, studying both West and East, in two very unusual schools.” Today, many of Ban’s buildings and structures use simple, cost-efficient and local materials in extremely imaginative ways. He is known for his visionary use of paper in a range of different building types, from temporary shelters and pavilions made from paper tubes to a Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand. Since his work with the United Nations following the Rwanda crisis in 1994, Ban has been designing and building light-weight and temporary housing for victims in disaster areas. In 1995, he founded the non-profit Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN), which has since built temporary structures and refugee shelters in India, China, Haiti, and Japan, among other countries. During a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Tom Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation, spoke about Ban’s innovative use of
materials: “[Shigeru Ban] looks at the world differently. He looks at something, and while others may look and say ‘That’s garbage,’ he looks and says ‘How can I use that, what is its utility?’” Since starting his own practice in 1985, Ban has built a reputation as the ‘People’s Architect,’ whether for building shelters for the neediest and most vulnerable members of society, or designing homes for private clients. When asked about being awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Ban responded: “Receiving this prize is a great honor, and with it, I must be careful. I must continue to listen to the people I work for, in my private residential commissions and in my disaster relief work. I see this prize as encouragement for me to keep doing what I am doing—not to change what I am doing, but to grow.” In this sense, Ban is difficult to define. Much of his work is often categorized as temporary, but his philosophy on the permanence of all buildings sheds light onto his spirit as an architect. To Ban, each commission he receives, paid or unpaid, ‘temporary’ or ‘permanent,’ is treated with the same amount of dedication and passion. To him, the “strength of [a building’s] material has nothing to do with the strength [or durability] of the building.” Instead, it is a community’s respect for a building that will drive its permanence. As he has said, “The most needed thing in architecture today is love. That’s what makes a building permanent.” When asked what piece of advice he would give SCI-Arc students today, Ban responded that travel was essential. “You have to travel a lot to see wonderful architecture and wonderful landscapes,” he said. “It’s just like being a chef, unless you have eaten good food, you cannot cook good food. Unless you have seen great architecture, you cannot design great architecture. Travelling and visiting architecture is the most important part of education.” A closing lesson comes from Tom Pritzker’s announcement of the jury’s selection: “Innovation is not limited by building type and compassion is not limited by budget. Shigeru has made our world a better place.”
THE PSYCHOLOGIST Excerpts from Eric Owen Moss’ Introduction to Shigeru Ban lecture, SCI-Arc, November 21, 2005. Karl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst, identified two personality prototypes: The extrovert and the introvert. The introvert bases his life entirely on the internal meanings he alone describes, while the extrovert’s frame of reference belongs entirely to the world outside himself. Jung might be surprised to find his analytical model of personalities applied to the contemporary discourse on architecture: Let’s identify the current internationalist paradigm as a global extrovert, and the insular, centuries-in-the-making traditions of Japan as the indigenous introvert. So Jung’s archetypal personality conflict could be imagined not as an exchange within a single individual, but as an intersection of two cultures. The architecture of Shigeru Ban, I think, belongs particularly to this tension between competing cultural prospects. [Ban’s] work suggests a[n] intricate and contradictory sensibility, one that might belong to the remarkable 7th century Taoist Ise Shrine. At Ise, a building is constructed on one of two adjacent sites and stands for twenty years. The contiguous site remains empty. After twenty years, the building is demolished and an identical structure is built on the adjacent site, and it, in turn, 3
stands for twenty years, and so on and so on. So the current structure at Ise is always both old and new; forever built, forever unbuilt, forever building; assembling and disassembling; enduring and ephemeral; temporary and permanent; specific and generic; tangible and abstract. Shigeru Ban is his own psychologist. As at Ise: Ban space, Ban shape, Ban material, Ban detail. Transform the dated extrovert/introvert dialectic and make Ban architecture a synthesis: Neither the international nor the indigenous allegiance, but a transcendent poetic voice which simultaneously invokes both Jung’s prototypes and belongs to neither.