-01052009

SHIGERU BAN: From the Empire of the Rising Sun. [laughs] I like saying that. It’s also a reference to the Japanese flag. But usually in Japan my friends tell me I don’t behave like I’m Japanese.



BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you consider yourself a “green” architect?

BAN: I hate that word, which is used so much these days. When I started getting involved in humanitarian or ecological questions, no one was really interested in the subject. I made the Kobe church from tubes of paper in 1995, but I’d started developing the idea of structures made from paper as early as 1986.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you feel you have a genius for inventing materials?

BAN: Not really. My main principle consists of reusing or recycling pre-existing materials. It took me several years to work out how to use the paper tubes. Today, I’m working on using sand for some condominiums in Dubai.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Hasn’t the work been stopped because of the current economic crisis?

BAN: To my great surprise, no, it hasn’t. But to go back to the previous question, people are always asking me what my next material is going to be. I don’t have any one material of predilection. The paper tubes represent barely 10 percent of my production. The architect Louis Khan had a beautiful expression. He said something like, “You have to listen to the will of the brick,” meaning, you have to use materials to function as what they’re destined for.

BENHAMOU-HUET: How did the idea for the rolls of paper come to you in the first place?

BAN: By observing the solidity of rolls of fax paper. It took me three years before I put the idea into practice, in Nagoya, in 1989. I did a lot of tests, and I finalized my research. Paper has become a part of my visual vocabulary. You know, paper is an industrial material. You can do almost anything with it. Wood, for example, is much more difficult to adapt to different needs.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you like readdressing pre-conceived ideas?

BAN: For me, there’s no difference between what’s temporary and what’s definitive. I built the church in Kobe, which was supposed to be temporary, and people liked it so much that there’s a version of it still there today—unlike some concrete buildings that were just built for money and that can be destroyed from one day to the next. Concrete can be very fragile during earthquakes.