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Paper Houses

Shigeru Ban is known for his achievements with paper: he is to paper what Le Corbusier was to concrete, or Norman Foster is to steel. The technique is simple, environment-friendly (being made from recycled paper), and inexpensive. The cardboard rolls that you see everywhere can be made to good use for temporary and semi-temporary shelters.

But the idea of building with paper seems riddled with problems - it is flammable, vulnerable to water, weak and temporary, but Ban turns all these arguments upside down: "How long do you think concrete lasts? It has many problems and it's very difficult to replace or fix. If a paper tube is damaged it can be replaced by a new one. The lifespan of a building has nothing to do with the materials. It depends on what people do with it. If a building is loved, then it becomes permanent. When it is not loved, even a concrete building can be temporary. And the strength of the material has nothing to do with the strength of the building. It depends on the structural design. Buildings made of concrete are easily destroyed by earthquakes, but paper-tube buildings can survive without damage." They are easily fireproofed and waterproofed, he continues, and they have significant advantages over other building materials in that they are cheap, environmentally friendly and easy to manufacture anywhere in the world.

After an earthquake in Japan, Ban came up with a simple "log cabin" made out of thick paper tubes, with plastic sheeting for the roofs, prefabricated windows and beer crates filled with sand for the foundations. Each cabin can be assembled in a few hours. This prevented the Vietnamese refugees from being driven out of cities.

He has established his own non-governmental organisation, the Voluntary Architects Network. With the help of donations and local labour, he has helped build temporary houses in other natural disaster zones such as Turkey, India and Sri Lanka. He is already talking to a British Pakistani benefactor about rehousing some of those devastated by the recent Kashmir earthquake.

Ban says, "I know many doctors or lawyers who work for charity, but I never see many architects doing it," he complains. "Earthquakes have a lot to do with architecture. People are not killed by earthquakes themselves, they are killed by collapse of the buildings. And after disasters there is always a need for shelter, but generally architects are more interested in working for privileged people and making monuments for them."

Voluntary Architects Network can be contacted at van_act@hotmail.com

Links: http://www.thepaperhouse.net/ban.html

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