“I don't like waste,” says Shigeru Ban. A simple sentence that sums up the entire philosophy of the Japanese architect, who builds with materials that others throw away: cardboard tubes, beer crates, Styrofoam, or shipping containers.
In his hands, these ordinary elements undergo a kind of alchemy, where fragility is transformed into durability and the everyday into architectural poetry.
The result is an inventive architecture that moves between luxury and necessity, between East and West, between “temporary” buildings and those that last. For Ban, in fact, every building is temporary. In cities like Los Angeles or Tokyo, he says, large buildings quickly disappear to be replaced by new, more profitable ones. Whereas a paper building can be permanent, if people love it and preserve it.
Recently honored with the 2026 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects and invited to lecture at the Royal Geographical Society, Ban remains a global architect. However, his main mission is to improve people's lives, especially in disaster-stricken areas. He is currently building a hospital in Lviv, western Ukraine, using laminated wood, a material widely produced in the country but unused due to the war.
Architecture, according to Ban, should be a flexible, mobile system that responds to nature. Japan, prone to earthquakes and natural disasters, has shaped this approach. After the devastating Kobe earthquake in 1995, Ban designed the “Paper Dome,” a church built in just five weeks by volunteers, with columns made of recycled cardboard tubes. Initially intended as a temporary structure, it became a symbol of reconstruction and, after ten years, was dismantled and relocated to Taomi, Taiwan, an area also hit by the earthquake.
Unlike architects with a distinct formal style, Ban has a “signature material”: paper. As early as 1985, he began experimenting with structures made of recycled cardboard, long before environmental issues became a central theme. He noticed that cardboard tubes used in the textile industry were stronger than they seemed and, together with structural engineers, developed building systems that were officially adopted in Japan.
Beyond churches and concert halls, Ban has designed modular shelters for displaced communities, lightweight partitions for emergency centers, and simple houses on foundations of beer crates filled with sand. This experience also gave rise to the Voluntary Architects' Network, a nonprofit organization that develops temporary shelters for victims of natural disasters and conflicts around the world.
One of his most famous works is the Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, built after the 2011 earthquake. With reinforced cardboard tubes and an A-shaped structure, it became a symbol of hope for the city. Here too, the simple material took on an almost sacred dimension.
But Ban doesn't limit himself to emergency architecture. He's also designed luxury boutiques in Tokyo's Ginza, art museums in Aspen, Colorado, and a branch of the Pompidou Center in Metz, France. He's currently working on a whiskey distillery in Speyside, Scotland, with a structure that resembles a fantasy forest.
However, he doesn’t see himself as a typical “starchitect.” “Architects usually work for people with wealth and power,” Ban says. “I want to use my experience for those who have lost their homes.”
Today, he is engaged in the reconstruction of houses on the Noto Peninsula in Japan, destroyed by the earthquake of January 1, 2024. The project will use recycled wood from a giant installation built for the Osaka Expo. “To burn all that wood would be a huge waste,” says Ban. As always, his philosophy remains the same: nothing goes to waste, everything can have a second life. /GazetaExpress/
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