
Shigeru Ban (b. 1957, Tokyo) attended the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and graduated from The Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1984. In 1985, he established Shigeru Ban Architects, a private practice in Tokyo. In 1995, he began working as a consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and in the same year established an NGO, Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN).
Renowned for his innovative ideas in works such as the Curtain Wall House; Japan Pavilion, EXPO 2000 (Hannover, Germany); Nicolas G. Hayek Center (Tokyo); Nomadic Museum; and Centre Pompidou-Metz (France), today, Ban operates three offices, in Tokyo, New York, and Paris. He has contributed his knowledge, skills, and energy to disaster-relief projects, including the Paper Log House (Kobe, Japan, 1995; Turkey, 2000, India, 2002), Paper Church (Kobe, 1995), Tsunami Reconstruction Project (Kirinda, Sri Lanka, 2005), Temporary Elementary School (Chengdu, China 2008), L’Aquila Temporary Concert Hall (L’Aquila, Italy, in progress), and waterproof shelters currently underway in Haiti.
Ban has been awarded a number of prizes, including the Grande Médaille d’Or de l’Académie d’Architecture, France (2004), Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture (2005), Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture (2005), l’Ordre National du Mérite, France (2009), and l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France (2010), and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2014). He served on the jury for the Pritzker Prize from 2007 to 2009; and as Professor at Keio University, Japan, from 2001 to 2008. He is a Visiting Professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and a Visiting Critic at Cornell University (2010).
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP: by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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