Shigeru Ban [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

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Product Description

Shigeru Ban lives and works in Tokyo, where he teaches architecture at Keio University. The scope of his practice - he has houses, museums, pavilions, and other public projects in progress in France, London, Beijing, Portugal, Brussels, and the United States - belies a relatively quiet early career in Tokyo. Following studies at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) and graduation from The Cooper Union in New York, he established his own firm in Toyko in 1985. During next decade, Ban built a following in Japan by designing dozens of unique small houses, exhibitions, and other projects using alternative, environmentally friendly materials: paper, wood, bamboo and prefabricated paper products. Following the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, Ban responded by designing emergency temporary housing he calls Paper Log Houses, made out of paper logs, waterproof sponge tape, and beer crates that could be assembled in a matter of hours by volunteers and provided shelter for hundreds of displaced residents. Following on the success of this project, from 1995 to 2000 Ban was a consultant to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, advising on temporary housing for displaced populations in Rwanda, Turkey, and India. He established the Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) in 1995, an organization that continues to promote such humanitarian assistance by architects. Ban has won several awards, including the Kansai Architect Grand Prize in 1996, and Best Young Architect of the Year from the Japan Institute of Architecture in 1997. Ban's fame began to spread rapidly beyond Japan when he was included in the Museum of Modern Art's "Un-Private House" exhibition in 1999 with his Curtain Wall House in Tokyo, a glass-and-steel house where privacy is controlled by means of monumental, two-story-high curtains along two glass facades that can be opened or closed. The following year Ban designed his first museum project in the United States, also at MoMA: "Paper Arch", an installation of cardboard tubes in a canopy over the museum's sculpture garden. Also in 2000, he collaborated with German architect Frei Otto to design the Japan Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hannover, a recyclable, organic-shaped structure of paper stretched over a paper tube armature. The modest names Ban gives to his projects - "Paper Church", "Library of a Poet", "Bamboo Furniture House", "Naked House" - express his lack of pretense and his focus on materials and structure rather than form for form's sake. This book features 32 of Ban's most exemplary projects realized since 1993, divided into 5 sections based on the primary materials or construction principle used: paper, wood, bamboo, prefabrication, and skin. Each project is documented with colour photographs, plans, drawings, and a brief, straightforward project description. In addition, the book contains four sections of "experimental data", or technical information, printed in red and black on grey tinted paper. These sections gather diagrams, tables, sketches, and explanatory text to document the numerous tests that Ban's office has made over the years to study the strength, performance, and structural potential of his materials. A foreword by the distinguished German architect Frei Otto, with whom Ban has collaborated for several years, introduces the book. Also included is an essay by Shigeru Ban about his work with Otto on the Japan Pavilion.

About the Author

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 an associate curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York Frei Otto is an eminent architect based in Leonburg, Germany; he pioneered research in lightweight membranes and innovative structures. He collaborated with Shigeru Ban on the Japan Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. He was awarded the 2005 Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; illustrated edition edition (November 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714841943
• ISBN-13: 978-0714841946
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 9.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,209,308 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Shigeru Ban is the future.", May 24, 2005

By	ArchiZona "archidreamer" (Phoenix, USA) - See all my reviews

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!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, persuasive monograph, October 7, 2004

By	Kram Niawt (Durham, NC, USA) - See all my reviews

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just Show, December 21, 2007

By	Bernardo Amenabar "develop design" (Santiago, Chile) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Shigeru Ban (Paperback)

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...