Taschen's Basic Art introduction to Shigeru Ban, the Pritzker Prize–winning architect whose paper tubes, shipping containers and cardboard cathedral have made material invention inseparable from humanitarian purpose.
About this book
Ban belongs to a small group of architects whose formal experiments and ethical commitments are the same gesture. He selects materials not for their technological credentials but for their expressive capacity—their ability to carry the concept of a building—and the result is an architecture that reads as three-dimensional poetry while remaining cheap enough to deploy after an earthquake. Paper tubing recurs across projects as unlike each other as the Japanese Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover and the Paper Log Houses built in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan. Compiled with Ban's own collaboration, this volume surveys the projects that matter most across a career the Pritzker jury described as a model for younger generations. A compact, well-illustrated entry point to a practice that scholar Riichi Miyake has likened to an architectural Doctors Without Borders.
Key features
- Part of Taschen's Basic Art Series, the best-selling art book collection ever published
- Approximately 120 illustrations—photographs, sketches, drafts and plans
- Major works presented in chronological order, with client and construction context
- Compiled in collaboration with Shigeru Ban
What you'll discover
- How paper tubing moved from expedient to signature structural material across three decades of built work
- The relationship between Ban's disaster-relief projects and his cultural commissions—why they are continuous rather than separate strands of practice
- Key projects including the Japanese Pavilion at Expo 2000, the Paper Log Houses and the cardboard cathedral
- How material selection functions as conceptual argument rather than technical decision
About the author
Arnt Cobbers studied art history, history and musicology, and completed a doctorate on medieval church architecture. He writes from Berlin, and his monographs on Erich Mendelsohn and Marcel Breuer were also published by Taschen.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Dimensions: 210 × 260 mm
- Pages: 96
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783754404560
- Publisher: Taschen
Perfect for
Architects and students seeking a concise introduction to Ban's work, readers interested in humanitarian and disaster-relief architecture, and collectors building a Taschen Basic Art shelf.