“Architects mostly work for privileged people, people who have money and power. . . I thought perhaps we can use our experience and knowledge more for the general public, even for those who have lost their houses in natural disasters. ”
Born in 1957, Shigeru Ban is a Japanese architect who won the 2014 Pritzker Prize for his significant contributions in architectural innovation and philanthropism.
His ability to re-apply conventional knowledge in differing contexts has resulted in a breadth of work that is characterized by structural sophistication and unconventional techniques and materials. Ban has used these innovations not only to create beautiful architecture but as a tool to help those in need, by creating fast, economical, and sustainable housing solutions for the homeless and the displaced. As the Pritzker jury cites: “Shigeru Ban is a tireless architect whose work exudes optimism. ”
Ban is also an industrial designer who has created a diverse portfolio of unique furniture and lighting products.
The following is an excerpt taken from a New Yorker profile on Shigeru Ban:
In a profession often associated with showmanship and ego, Ban’s work appears humble, and appropriate to a historical moment that celebrates altruism, or its posture. The Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a member of the Pritzker jury, was moved by Ban’s commitment to the dispossessed. “The world is filled with billions of people, and most of them live in conditions where they will never see an architect or an architect-designed space, ” he said. “To have a first-rate architect pay attention to those in need of shelter, and build better-quality buildings to serve their aesthetic and human needs—that is wonderful. ”
With a team of student volunteers, Ban has touched down at nearly every major natural-disaster site of the past two decades. The arc of his career tracks the rise of cataclysmic weather as page-one news: the Kobe earthquake, which killed six thousand people (1995); the magnitude-7. 4 earthquake in Turkey that left half a million homeless (1999); the Gujarat earthquake (2001); the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004); Hurricane Katrina (2005); the Sichuan earthquake (2008); the L’Aquila earthquake (2009); Haiti, Tohoku, the Philippines. Ban’s practice, according to Riichi Miyake, a scholar of Japanese architecture, is “an architectural iteration of Doctors Without Borders. ”