Shigeru Ban: "A building made of paper by students can be permanent"

BarcelonaJapanese architect Shigeru Ban (Tokyo, 1957) has often been defined as the Robin Hood of contemporary architecture: he has built buildings for the luxury sector, such as a factory for Rolex in Switzerland, but he is also known for his humanitarian work. Since the mid-1990s, Ban has designed emergency shelters and housing during numerous conflicts, from the Rwandan genocide to the War in Ukraine, as well as earthquakes and floods in Japan, Turkey, India, Sri Lanka, China, Haiti, Italy, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

Ban, in fact, participated this Tuesday in the UIA World Architects Congress held in Barcelona while preparing a trip to Venezuela with his NGO, Voluntary Architects Network (VAN). "I started working in areas affected by natural disasters because I was very disappointed with the profession, because basically we work for privileged people who have power and money —explains Ban—. Since power and money are invisible, they hire us to build a monument, to show their power to the public. But I don't mean I'm not interested in building a monument, but rather that I hoped to use my knowledge and experience not only for the privileged, but also for the general public, even for people who have lost their homes due to natural disasters".

Many of these emergency buildings are made with cardboard tube structures and sandbags. Sometimes the foundations are plastic beer crates or some other soft drink. It also recycles wood, bricks, and other materials that can be salvaged from ruin. "People are not killed by earthquakes, but they die because of buildings, due to building collapse. This is our responsibility as architects. To rebuild the city, we need more projects. And people continue to suffer. Before, the living conditions in evacuation facilities and temporary housing were very precarious, and I thought it was up to us to improve these types of situations," says Ban, who, if necessary, confronts anyone who obstructs his projects, as happened with the cardboard tube and fabric structures with which he created dividers to give privacy to the dozens of people sheltered in a gymnasium during the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011.

Throughout the conference, Ban has shown the philosophical and material continuity between his museums, office blocks, and auditoriums and emergency constructions. As his host, the also architect Jordi Badia, said, in Ban's architecture there is a pursuit of "simplicity and sincerity." "I started using cardboard tubes in the mid-eighties not for environmental reasons, but because I discovered they were stronger than I thought, and because I didn't want to waste materials," Ban recalled.

Some of his emergency works have lasted for years. The cathedral with cardboard tubes and shipping containers that he made in 2011 in Christchurch (New Zealand) is still in operation. "My definition of permanence is that a building can be permanent as long as people love it. We built a shelter in Taiwan after an earthquake, we dismantled it so that a typhoon would not destroy it, and we rebuilt it. Now it has become a church and a community center," he says to illustrate what a temporary structure is and what a permanent structure is. "In any large city, suddenly a large building disappears to put a new one there, because the real estate developer buys the land, destroys the existing building to build a new one. Therefore, any commercial building is temporary. All buildings made to earn money are temporary, but even buildings made of paper by students can be permanent as long as people love them. This is the definition of a permanent structure," says the architect emphatically.

India's global exploitation responsibility

Among the first conferences of the second day of the congress at the International Convention Centre of Barcelona were those by architect Marina Tabassum, from Bangladesh, and Palinda Kannangara, from Sri Lanka, on site-rooted materials, moderated by Martha Thorne. "We are all very connected. What you do here affects how people live there —warned Tabassum—. When we talk about the climate crisis: our overexploitation and lack of repair have created a situation that the Bangladeshi living on a riverbank doesn't know was generated by a wider extraction from the world, but they are the ones suffering the consequences. We are connected, and therefore, we are all responsible, it's not just a problem for Bangladesh; it's global, but we are not prepared to assume it".

Another of the activities was a performance-conversation driven by Beth Galí, Jordi Romeu, Eduard Rodríguez, and Eduard Fernández, with the support of the COAC, to demand the improvement of working conditions for architects. The event concluded with the reading of the manifesto Architects in crisis: wounded architecture, a document addressed to the UIA congress that calls for, among other things, the review of the law on architectural quality, the recognition of intellectual work in project design, and public policies that value quality over cost. "The goal is not to make a complaint. It is to plant a seed for a movement to build a dignified future", say the organizers.