La filosofia di Shigeru Ban, recente vincitore del Praemium Imperiale per l'Architettura

Shigeru Ban aspired to be an architect after building a model of a house for a summer project in junior high
school. After graduating from high school, he went to the United States to study at the Southern California
Institute of Architecture before transferring to the Cooper Union School of Architecture. Upon graduation, he
returned to Japan and opened his own practice. In 1994, he approached the United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees and subsequently built shelters for a Rwandan refugee camp and the following
year he built temporary housing after the Kobe Earthquake. This led him to found the Voluntary Architects
Network (VAN) to promote the use of paper tube shelters in disaster areas around the world. He has also
designed a number of innovative buildings including Pompidou Centre-Metz with its undulating laminated
wood and membrane roof, Swatch Omega headquarters and Simose Art Museum. Winner of the 2014 Pritzker
Prize, Ban has fulfilled his mission as an architect in times of peace as well as in times of emergency.