Shigeru Ban

by McQuaid, Matilda; Otto, Frei

• ISBN13: 9780714846293
• ISBN10: 0714846295
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-03-01
• Publisher: Phaidon Press

Summary

Shigeru Ban lives and works in Tokyo, where he teaches architecture at Keioniversity. The current scope of his practice - houses, museums, pavilions,nd other public projects on several continents - belies a relatively quietarly career in Tokyo. Following studies at the Southern California Institutef Architecture (SCI-ARC) and graduation from The Cooper Union in New York,e established his own firm in Toyko in 1985. During next decade, Ban built aollowing in Japan by designing dozens of unique small houses, exhibitions,nd other projects using alternative, environmentally friendly materials:aper, wood, bamboo, and prefabricated paper products. Following the 1995arthquake in Kobe, Japan, Ban responded by designing emergency temporaryousing he calls Paper Log Houses, made out of paper logs, waterproof spongeape, and beer crates that could be assembled in a matter of hours byolunteers and provided shelter for hundreds of displaced residents.ollowing on the success of this project, from 1995 to 2000 Ban was aonsultant to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, advising on

Author Biography

Matilda McQuaid is Exhibitions Curator and Head of the Textiles Department at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, and until 2001, was Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is the author of numerous essays on architecture, textiles and fibre art in journals and museum publications, including a contribution to Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from the Museum of Modern Art (Museum of Modern Art, 2002), which she also edited.

Frei Otto is an eminent architect based in Germany, who has pioneered research in lightweight membranes and innovative structures. He founded the Development Centre for Lightweight Construction in Berlin in 1957, which later became the Institute for Lightweight Structures in Stuttgart. He collaborated with Shigeru Ban on the Japan Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany.