(Photo: © Hiroyuki Hirai)Ban Residence, Lake Yamanaka, Yamanashi, Japan
Architect: Shigeru Ban
Cardboard is one of civilization’s humblest materials, but Tokyo-based Shigeru Ban Architects has been transforming it into intimate structures of compelling elegance, from a teahouse to a church to a library to an art gallery.
Ban’s paper pavilion of 1995 is a chic riff on his widely admired emergency housing for survivors of that same year’s Kobe earthquake. Designed as his weekend home, it recalls an eco-conscious Barcelona Pavilion, composed of an S-shape coil made of thick vertical logs of recycled cardboard that is inserted into a glass box whose walls slide open to a surrounding terrace. The curves divide the interior into free-form, multifunctional living spaces.
