Designer & bike rider in British Columbia, Canada

Shigeru Ban

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Born in Japan and trained at the Southern California Institute Of Architecture and Cooper Union, Shigeru Ban is—I’m informed by my architecture student friend—a big name in the field. And Ban started his lecture talking about and against big, or monumental, buildings.

Traditionally architects build monuments—skyscrapers or office complexes or museums–for the rich and powerful. Architects play, in Ban’s mind, a more responsible role to the public at large. As I understood it, architects must build for everyone.

This responsibility also extends to building safety. Earthquakes don’t kill people, Ban emphasized: buildings do. Floods often don’t kill people, but the deforestation required for buildings does.
Before getting to his more famous humanitarian work, slides of Ban’s early residential work in Japan show his explorations in the confluence of interior and exterior spaces. There was a preoccupation with sliding glass doors and vertical blinds as walls. Inspired by the work of Mies Van der Rohe and traditional Japanese homes Ban found the former didn’t always need to have walls to support his ceilings while the latter’s sliding walls created more air throughput. In many cases my impression is that Ban merely builds a flat roof supported on thin columns, thus removing walls and allowing residents to freely exchange indoor/outdoor environments.

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Shigerua Ban – Wall-less House – Nagano, Japan, 1997. Thin columns, sliding glass and adjustable canopy “to raise when visitors come.” Even the bathroom is out in the open.

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Shigeru Ban – Shutter House for a Photographer – Tokyo, Japan, 2003. The “walls” here are adjustable blinds. Built in a crowded residential area, the horizontal slats can be rotated open and closed.

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Shigeru Ban – Picture Window House – Shizuoka, Japan, 2001.

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Shigeru Ban – 2/5 House – Hyogo, Japan, 1995 – The floor plan is divided into five equal rectangles three of which are outdoor.

These open designs also lend themselves to respect the way neighbours use a space before a new building arrives. In one case Ban was commissioned to build a new apartment building in a small park with existing trees. I won’t cut any trees down, Ban promised, so he built the complex around the foliage, allowing them to grow through large oval openings in the middle of the structure. Locals had also been using the park as a short cut to the bus stop so Ban left a wide breeze way open under the main area of the building.

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Shigeru Ban – Hanegi Forest – Tokyo, Japan, 1997. Notice the trees through the oval openings.
Within these open designs Ban also worked with modular floor plans and their ability to configure the space as the tenant’s use changed. Nine-Square Grid House (1997) in particular is significant if just for its nomenclature: only two rooms have a label and thus explicit use: bathroom and kitchen. The remaining seven grids, by way of sliding partitions, can be whatever name and function you wish. Naked House, designed for a small family, is particularly cute. Here the only “rooms” for the kids are moveable three-sided boxes to hang out inside or on top of. If the kids want air conditioning, Ban says, they can just slide their box over to an sliding door.

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Shigeru Ban – Naked House – Saitama, Japan, 2000. The kids’ rooms are on wheels.

On a larger scale Ban was given the challenge to create an portable exhibit space for a famous Canadian photographer. Rather than building an expensive and wasteful structure to bring to locations around the world Ban brought the exhibit to the structure, so to speak. Large shipping containers come, it turns out, in a world-wide standard size. By using these empty containers at each major locale the walls of the exhibit were stacked Lego-like in open-spaced grids capped by basically a plastic tarp. The design was especially modular in that it could be configured easily for varying spaces and weights (for example on old wooden docks). The best part is that material costs are almost void: crates were borrowed at each port.

Again and again Ban casually explained the impetus for his ideas developed from this simple fact: he didn’t have the money to do go big. Which is where his most famous cardboard tube buildings originated. What material is cheap, pretty strong and readily available to anyone working in the architecture (or textile) industry? The left-over tubes from big rolls of paper.

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Shigeru Ban – Japan Pavillion, Expo 2000, Hannover – Germany, 2000. Paper tube construction.

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Shigeru Ban – Paper Log Houses – Kaynasli, Turkey, 2000. Quick, easy and cheap, adjustable for hot and cold climates. Even the plastic beer crate foundations are donated and chosen to match the colour of the plastic tarp roof.

In short the paper tubes are most often used as vertical supports and are surprisingly strong. Ban has built dozens of designs from huge domed exhibitions to disaster relief shelters. There’s lots of info online about Ban’s tube structures and his humanitarian work, so I’ll just summarize in a sec some of the more interesting points I came away with.
As my architecture student friend pointed out, Ban’s humble attitude and sense of humour made for a pleasant hour compared to some of the stuck-up architects he’s been lectured by. In one of his paper tube houses the toilet is actually built into a particularly large, tall and hollow column. Not only are the sound effects particularly impressive in there, mused Ban, but if you run out of toilet paper you can simply tear a new piece off the wall. On another aside, for years Ban wanted to build his own paper-tube weekend getaway but could never afford it. Now that he can (and did) he doesn’t have any weekends.

Other Shigeru Ban Points:

  • Furniture both saves and kills people in an earthquake. As a sort of proof-of-concept and experiment Ban constructed a home almost entirely out of pre-fabricated furniture.
  • There was emphasis on designs that anyone could assemble.
  • Paper tubes were an acceptable material for African relief shelters. Being hollow they are not susceptible to termites (a major problem over there), which like to eat cellulose hidden from human view.
  • Paper tubes are not only cheap, available and strong, but they look nice, which is important when refuge slums pop up in middle class neighbourhoods.
  • Ban tries to work with a minority group (for example, a subset of refuges) because of the more manageable smaller scale, and, I’m guessing, the reward of working within a close-knit group.
  • Despite frowning upon monumental architecture Ban admits he likes to make nice big buildings, too. For example, his large, paper tube relief church in Japan. But although the church still stands and everyone in the church admires it, the building was recently disassembled and loaned to a town in China destroyed by a natural disaster.

All images taken from www.shigerubanarchitects.com except the portrait (from here) and the ticket, which is mine and I scanned it.


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Comments

19 Responses to “Shigeru Ban”

  1. kamil banasik Avatar
    kamil banasik

    hi, i’m searching for photos and map of the enviroment of shigeru bans project: house for a dentist.
    are able to sent me some information about this project?

  2. Joel Avatar
    Joel

    Hey im am doing a research prject into your work with the wall less house and have found a range of information about it however i am finding it hard to find anything about the construction of the house or of materials used. I was there for wondering if you could either send me any information on the matter or point me in the direction of a good website with these details. Many Thanks

    1. Julian Carelsen Avatar
      Julian Carelsen

      Hi there Joel, im also doing a research project on the Wall less house, i see you found a range of information could you perhaps forward this information to me please im battling to find any substantial information

  3. Stevie Brummer Avatar
    Stevie Brummer

    Hi, I am doing a project on the Picture Window House and desperately need floor plans, elevations, a site plan, and possible the address. Thank you very much

  4. Patricia Beaulieu Avatar
    Patricia Beaulieu

    Hello, I’m looking into paper tube construction in Canada (cold and warm climate with a fair amount of precipitation) for a project and was wondering if anyone could send me information on this product. Thank you.

  5. Verzentz Avatar
    Verzentz

    hello, i’m architecture french student in Tokyo, and i’m looking for Glass Shutter Windows, naked house and dentist house…
    I NEED THE ADDRESS !!!
    impossible to find it…
    if you can help me, thank you.
    and if you have something else to show me… OK!
    V.

  6. Wendall Chin Avatar
    Wendall Chin

    Hello, I’m reaserching my project on your Picture Window House. I’m in need of the entire landscape from the ocean to the tip of the hill. If you could provide a landscape site along with wide range of photos relative to the house, that would be great. Also, an address would we great so I’m able to search through Google Earth.
    Thank you,

  7. Jeff Werner Avatar

    I am not Shigeru Ban

    Posted by Wendall Chin | February 13, 2008 2:39 PM on http://jeffwerner.ca/2006/06/shigeru_ban.html Hello, I’m reaserching [sic] my project on your Picture Window House. I’m in need of the entire landscape from the ocean to the tip of the hill. If…

  8. Tyler Avatar
    Tyler

    Hey, you should send Patricia the link to your paper tube bed.
    These comments are pretty funny, I missed them before. Although I think the requests for you to stop people’s hair from turning white are better.

  9. Jasmine Avatar
    Jasmine

    Hey, I am doing a project on the Paper Art Museum.
    I need floor plans, elevations and site plan.
    i would appreciate if you could provide me with the address.
    Thanks. =)

  10. kevin beechinor Avatar
    kevin beechinor

    Hello,
    I am an Architeture Grad student at ASU… I am looking for floor plans, elevations, site plans…interesting photos. Please let me know if you have anything that an help me out…

  11. Walt Martin Avatar
    Walt Martin

    Kevin I can help you out- please email me walt.martin@me.com

  12. Hew Robers Avatar
    Hew Robers

    Hi.
    Researching Picture Window House and am requiring structural details; plans/ sections and most importantly, any axonometrics or exploded axos depicting structure that you may be able to point me towards. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    Cheers, Hew.

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Hi i’m also desperatly seeking any structural detail drawings for the Picture window house!
    anything wouold be great!

  14. sily Avatar
    sily

    Hi am a student from limkokwing university Malaysia, looking for some detail drawings or any information related to 2/5 house in hyogo japan.
    can anyone help me on this…

  15. tamar Avatar

    heloo
    i looking for some plants to your house – ” paper house ”
    I am looking for floor plans, elevations, site plans…interesting photos. Please let me know if you have anything that an help me out…

  16. Aaron Chin Avatar
    Aaron Chin

    Hello,
    I’m also doing a research project on the wonderful Picture Window House and I’m wondering if I could get the landscape and additional pictures and diagrams for the house. If anything?
    Thanks,
    Aaron

  17. Vivi Avatar
    Vivi

    Hello, I was wondering if anyone had images of plans, elevations, golden sections, and/or axonometry of the Wall-less house?
    Please help!!

  18. sarah Avatar
    sarah

    Hello, I was desperatly seeking if anyone have images of plans, elevations, sections, and/or axonometry of the 2/5 house.

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