Building Relief Shelters from Paper: Ban Shigeru / Architect

"Direct Talk"

Our guest today is architect Ban Shigeru.

Ban has designed concert halls, museums,

and other famous buildings around the world.

He's known for balancing beauty and structural rationality.

His design for the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France

features a striking undulating roof.

For the Japanese Pavilion at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany,

he designed a roof made of recyclable paper tubes.

In 2014, Ban was awarded the Pritzker Prize,

known as the Nobel Prize of the architecture world.

And for three decades he's been committed to relief efforts

in conflict-torn and disaster-stricken areas throughout the world.

Following Russia's attack on Ukraine in February 2022,

he began working to help Ukrainian refugees

scattered throughout Europe.

Conflicts. Natural disasters.

In a world beset by problems of a global scale,

what does this architect aspire to create?

He shares his thoughts on his recent humanitarian projects,

and on Ukraine.

Building Relief Shelters from Paper

I'm often asked, "What drives you?"

But if a doctor saw an injured person in front of them,

it wouldn't matter if they were friend or foe,

they'd treat that person.

So as an architect,

it's my responsibility to help improve living situations for people.

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Amid intensifying fighting, more than six million people

have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries.

Roughly two weeks after the invasion began,

Ban was at an emergency shelter in Chelm,

a Polish city near the Ukrainian border.

He helped install a partition system

that created over 300 units to ensure privacy for evacuees.

In this case, the people coming into the shelters

are mostly women and children.

As you've heard in the news,

the men aren't allowed to leave Ukraine.

They must stay and fight for their country.

So the evacuees have left behind their husbands and fathers,

and they're very worried.

Being unable to flee as a family has left them in distress.

I believe privacy is a fundamental human right.

It's especially tough for women

to have to sleep in a place with no privacy.

Every time there's a natural disaster in Japan,

we see many cases of women sleeping in their cars

and dying of so-called economy-class syndrome.

I was told one Ukrainian woman entered one of the separated spaces

and suddenly burst into tears.

She must have felt vulnerable being on the run.

They're so on-edge they can't even cry.

But when they enter this space where their privacy is protected,

they can relax a little.

The partitions are made using fabric curtains

and tubes of tightly rolled recycled paper.

Paper tubes are ideal in times of disaster

because they are easy to manufacture,

readily available, and inexpensive.

They're also lightweight and maneuverable.

It's designed so the partitions can be constructed

even by volunteers and students.

The lightweight materials make a big difference.

We use brown-colored recycled paper,

so you get this woody look and very warm feel.

You can find paper tubes practically anywhere in the world.

There are factories in Poland and in Ukraine, too.

Companies that make tubes for us have to stop their regular production.

This one Belgian company even offered to provide them free of charge.

The installation of partitions for Ukrainian evacuees

was done with the help of a Polish architect and his students.

Ban says one thing in particular struck him during his visit.

It was like the entire country had mobilized to show support.

I saw Ukrainian flags up all over town...

and people wearing blue and yellow ribbons.

I even saw a number of people

holding up signs offering to shelter evacuees in their homes.

It was clear it wasn't just the government providing relief,

it was individual citizens, too.

As news of the partitions at the shelter in Chelm spread,

Ban began receiving requests from other locations.

I got a lot of requests from other cities around Poland

to install my partition system.

And many of these refugees move on from Poland to other countries.

So we installed partitions in Paris.

We're also setting them up now in Slovakia.

We're in the process of getting the ball rolling

in Hungary and Romania, too.

Ban was born in Tokyo.

His father worked for an automaker,

and his mother was a fashion designer.

As a kid, Ban aspired to become a carpenter.

After high school, he went to the U.S. to study architecture,

later transferring to the prestigious Cooper Union.

He first started using paper in 1986.

He'd returned to Japan after graduating from architecture school,

and was working on the interior of an exhibition of works

by a famous architect.

We didn't have the budget to use natural wood.

But I had these paper tubes that were used for fax paper rolls.

I'd kept them because they were very rigid.

I used those instead of wood.

Naturally, you don't want to let things go to waste.

That's not a new concept by any means.

But this was the 80s, in the middle of Japan's bubble economy.

Nowadays, concepts like "ecology" and "sustainability"

have become trendy.

But at the time, they'd yet to become widely used.

And so, building with those kinds of cheap materials

didn't appeal to people.

I had to really work to convince them.

The thing is, building good architecture

and using expensive materials are different things.

I'd just started working as an architect,

and most of the work was low budget.

So I wanted to build good architecture and spaces

using the low cost materials I had around me.

Ban's involvement with humanitarian projects and disaster relief

began after the Rwandan Civil War broke out in the early 1990s.

More than two million Rwandan refugees

streamed into neighboring countries to escape the violence.

Seeing images of refugees freezing in camps,

he began working with the UN Refugee Agency

to provide emergency shelters made of paper tubes.

I realized that architects hadn't really been serving society.

Our clients are a privileged class.

But wealth and political power are not tangible in and of themselves,

so they hire architects to build impressive structures

that speak to their power.

Working to improve living conditions for the general public

or for victims of disaster,

that too, is an architect's job.

Around the same time,

the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck western Japan,

destroying more than 100,000 buildings

and taking the lives of about 6,500 people.

Two weeks later, Ban was there.

He helped to build emergency shelters for displaced victims

using paper tubes.

He also worked with volunteers to build a community center

on the site of a church that had been destroyed by fire.

That paper structure was later disassembled

and shipped to Taiwan to help another earthquake-hit community.

It's since become a permanent church and community center,

27 years on from the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

Seeing my buildings, made of paper,

being loved and used for a long time...

that gives me a lot of courage.

I see commercial architecture designed for profit as temporary,

even if it's made of concrete.

It's a cycle.

A developer buys the land,

demolishes the building, and constructs a new one.

So whether a structure is temporary or permanent

has nothing to do with the building material.

It has to do with whether the structure

is beloved by the people using it.

I spent a lot of time in the U.S. for college

and am often asked if I did volunteer work back then, too.

But no, not once.

My relief work hasn't been influenced by any one person.

But believe it or not, as a kid I loved "Thunderbirds,"

the British show about an "international rescue team."

I thought it was so cool

that when someone around the world was in trouble,

they sprang into action to help.

That's the one thing that comes to mind.

Ever since, Ban has continued to contribute

to disaster relief projects around the world.

He's built schools, temporary housing...

and churches.

He's worked closely with communities in recovery efforts.

In emergency situations, speed is of the essence.

You have to take action immediately.

Often people try to assemble a team together before setting off,

but when you try to do that,

you spend so much time on pointless discussions.

So first I get things moving myself.

I can put together a team on the ground after I get there.

For me, the number one priority is getting to the location.

Ban first came up with the idea for his partition system

in the aftermath of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake.

He first attempted to deploy it after the 2004 Chuetsu Earthquake.

At first, I used paper honeycomb to create house-like structures.

But at the shelter, city officials rejected it

because something like that had never been done before.

Ultimately, I was able to set up a few

that were used as changing rooms and play areas.

It became clear to me then

that I had to better understand not only the needs of the users,

but also the needs of the administration.

For example, the officials wanted to be able to

open up the space during daytime

to get a sense of how people were doing.

Through multiple iterations, Ban has created a system

that's been implemented in many disaster areas in Japan.

He's even entered into disaster prevention agreements,

where local governments agree to cover the installation costs.

His international work also continues.

Following the eruption of a submarine volcano in Tonga in January 2022,

he sent tents to provide temporary housing.

We designed tents to serve as shelters and shipped them the materials.

Now we're looking into developing designs for houses

that the Tongan people can manufacture themselves.

When it comes to building materials, Tonga relies heavily on imports.

But we're planning to create a housing unit designed

so that the local people can easily manufacture

and construct it themselves.

Ever looking toward the future,

Ban is also thinking how to potentially help Ukraine rebuild

after the war.

When you think about it, destruction looks completely different

when it's been caused by humans,

as opposed to natural disasters.

So I imagine the process of rebuilding war-torn towns

will be very different from reconstruction efforts

after a natural disaster.

Naturally, local architects should be the ones leading the efforts.

But we Japanese have our own techniques

and know-how that we've accumulated.

I believe we can support them

by investing in transferring our expertise and technology over to them.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"Less is more."

One of the architects I respect most is Mies van der Rohe.

This is his word.

"Less is more" which means,

in order to have rich space and environment,

we can use less material and less energy.

I think this is his meaning and I really appreciate this philosophy.