"The Simplicity And Banality of Paper"

January 26, 2014 9:23 AM

Shigeru Ban: ‘People’s architect’ combines permanence and paper"

Generally speaking, an architect’s style is defined by particular forms or shapes. There’s Frank Lloyd Wright’s prominent horizontal lines, for instance; Le Corbusier’s simple white boxes; or, more recently, the deliberately abstract masses of Frank Gehry — of Guggenheim Bilbao fame. But in the view of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, such formal elements are ultimately little more than reflections of current trends — in the first two cases above, Modernism, and in the third, “blobbism,” or the recent taste for irregular shapes made possible by computer-aided design. According to Ban, the only way for architects to keep their work free from the influence of such transient fashions is to come up with new ways to actually build things — new materials, for example, or new approaches to structural engineering. His own answer? Paper — or, to be more precise, cardboard tubes.

a link to an interview with SwissInfo.
Shigeru Ban: Engineering and Architecture: Building The Japan Pavilion [PDF]

Shigeru Ban, Architects, previously
via

posted by the man of twists and turns (2 comments total)

According to Ban, the only way for architects to keep their work free from the influence of such transient fashions is to come up with new ways to actually build things

Which will in turn become transient fashions.

Me, I prefer the classics.

(You know who else was a people's architect?)
posted by IndigoJones at 12:17 PM on January 26, 2014

What’s the most important thing when making architecture?

Even something that I intended as a temporary structure, like a paper church I made in Kobe in 1995, can end up being permanent. That church was relocated to Taiwan in 2006, after they had an earthquake there, and it still exists today. Ultimately, what determines the permanence of a building is not the wealth of the developer or the materials that are used, but the simple question of whether or not the resulting structure is supported — loved — by the people.

Architecture made simply for profit — even if it’s in concrete — is in fact temporary. Commercial architecture is precisely that. If it is made for making money then eventually some other developer will come along and try to make more money out of it by demolishing it and rebuilding it. And it just repeats. In that way concrete is in fact temporary.

However, if you make architecture that is loved by the people, then regardless of what it is made of, it will be kept.

Could not have put it better given a thousand years to do so.
posted by localroger at 3:15 PM on January 26, 2014 [4 favorites]