Customer Reviews

Shigeru Ban

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Shigeru Ban is famous for his innovative use of building materials, structural rigor and pureness. This book captures all these quintessential attributes of this ingenious architect.

The editor did a great job of organizing Ban's projects according to the building materials (i.e., paper, wood, bamboo, prefab, and skin). Multiple projects in each chapter form a coherent and articulated presentation of how Ban took advantage of the uniquessness of certain material and incorporated it into his architectural philosophy and aesthetics.

The text is technical oriented which often includes the characteristics of the materials and the issues concerning structural engineering. At the end of most chapters, you can find detailed technical information and test statistics of the building materials used in the featured projects. Moreover, at the beginning of the book, Ban also contributed an article on the whole building process of building his classic work: Japanese Pavillion, which is very informative and instructive.

Another noteworthy strength of this book is that it reveals the connectness of Ban's different projects and shows how the architect developed and built his own architectural style programmatically (e.g., How he developed, refined, and matured the paper architecture, the furniture house idea, the ivy structure, and the universal floor plan through several dozens of projects).

Put together, this is a well-organized, thoughtful, and informative book about Ban's contribution to the international architectural community. Bravo!

The book itself is almost the perfect monograph. Each project is described concisely, and it has all the drawings and photos to orient the reader to the site, the program and the idea. The drawings and photos range from the finest detail to the biggest gestures, and doesn't isolate the projects like they're pristine objects. The photos often emphasize the construction or assembly of the work, though the finished photos and model shots are expressive and informative too. The pages with experimental and test calculations are well-organized and relate back to specific projects and details, using graphs, tables and pictures or drawings of the elements or details in question. For a non-engineer, it's all rather clear and convincing. I've never seen ideas and processes presented so rationally and convincingly. Nothing here seems superfluous and Ban reveals his process and interests completely to the reader.

Of course, the projects themselves are fantastic. John Hedjuk's influence is all over the work, and I dare say that Ban's actualized projects are now richer, have reached greater depth and are more expressive and informative than his mentor's. On one level, you could imagine that Ban's preoccupation with wood products, "green" construction and sustainable design started as a bad pun that served as the basis of his student thesis. ("Paper Architecture." Ha-ha.) But the rigor and depth that he brings to each project break through any temptation to show self-conscious irony or superficiality. At the end of the day, he's an architect's architect who controls proportion and light, defines space and considers human scale in all his work. He makes Calatrava look like "just" an engineer. And his works aren't just formal exercises with nine square grids and such. His ideas and works begin to touch on politics without seeming pretentious or partisan with his refugeee shelters and other more recent work (although those private houses do present a counterpoint to the socially-oriented work in more ways than one).

Anyway, great book, great work. I'm totally convinced of Ban's skills and talent.

The fact that this book comes with real explanation and plans of the proyects is why it was chosen above all others... arquitects don't read pictures, they read plans...

I really enjoyed this book due to its in-depth investigation on the designs of Shigeru Ban. Ample in the book is photographs as well as technical drawings such as plans and sections. The mentioned technical drawings are not small enough that you can't read them but they aren't very big either. The pictures itself is printed on high quality paper which contributes to the overall readability. It should be noted that much of the photographs and diagrams could be found on Shigeru Ban's own website though this shouldn't be a deterrent since there are also much information that isn't posted on his website that is included in the book.

As such, i found this book to have more of a focus on the structural nature of Ban's materials as there is a section at the end of every chapter noting the structural tests and strength of the materials used. This certainly isn't a bad thing considering it is an architect's job to make sure that a building that he/she designs is one that stand up to the forces of nature. However, laymen could be turned off by these end of the chapter sections. Furthermore, detailed and exploded axonometric drawings are scattered in this book that show the structure of the building which is a definite plus.

One should note that this book was first published 2003 so it doesn't have much of Ban's latest works but that shouldn't deter anyone from purchasing this book as it still have a lot of positive aspects

This is definitely one of Phaidon's better architectural monographs and should serve to inspire and inform.

the work of this interessant japanese architect, it's a demonstration of a continuated and progressive developmente of an architecture beautifull and deep.

Excellent book,interesting, useful not only for architectors but for anybody. good print quality.