J-architect draws inspiration out of a hat

[Taro Toporific]

Museum or China peasant's hat?
AP, August 8, 2005, PARIS---
....The Pompidou Center Metz in eastern France, due to open in 2008, will show rotating exhibits from the Paris museum's 56,000 treasures that rarely get seen due to lack of space...
Heading the new Pompidou's three-man design team is Japanese award-winning architect Shigeru Ban, who drew inspiration from a conical bamboo hat."I bought the hat six years ago in a Chinese clothes shop in Paris when I was already thinking about ideas for roofs," Ban told The Associated Press.
Playing off the conical theme but to a softer effect, the roof of the Metz museum will rise to a rounded peak at the top and have a gently rippled brim, according to design plans. It will sit atop a gallery space of 10,000-square-meters (32,800-square-feet) that, like the Paris Pompidou, will have glass-paneled walls and panoramic views....more...

[Mulboyne]

Guardian: Material guy
Shigeru Ban is not your average architect...Above all else, though, Ban is known for his achievements with paper: he is to paper what Le Corbusier was to concrete, or Norman Foster is to steel. He has spent a good portion of his career exploring its possibilities and repositioning it as a viable, potentially invaluable, building material for the future. In doing so, he might have exposed a giant hole in our current assessment of what good architecture really is...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...more...

[Taro Toporific]

[floatl][/floatl]
Paper bridge unveiled in southern France
27 juillet 2007 (AFP) -Japanese architect Shigeru Ban -- iconic for his use of eco-friendly, lightweight materials -- on Friday lifted the veil on a paper bridge over the Gardon River in southern France.
Built half a mile from the Pont du Gard -- a section of ancient Roman bridge classed as a UN World Heritage site -- Shigeru's cardboard-tube structure is strong enough to carry 20 people at a time.
Reaching over the water to a sandy islet mid-river, it opens to the public for six weeks starting on Monday, before it is dismantled for the rainy season.
"It is a very interesting contrast, the Roman stone bridge and the paper bridge. Paper too can be permanent, can be strong and lasting. We need to get rid of these prejudices," Ban said.
"A bridge was one of my dreams," he said, as he thanked the two dozen French architecture students and three from Japan who built the bridge as a month-long project....more....