Interview

BENHAMOU-HUET: Who do you consider to be your masters in architecture?

BAN: At the time of my studies, I admired Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but when I started traveling, I went to Finland, in 1985, and it was there that I understood that the contribution of Alvar Aalto was capital. To understand his work, you have to go to the sites in question, because he really created buildings that function in their environments. I think I had a sort of vision very early on, but it wasn’t as clear then as it is now. The most important thing, in order to forge one’s own creative personality, is to travel, to see different environments, different cultures. I wanted to try to imagine a new kind of structure in architecture. In general, architects follow fashions. They’re neoclassical, postmodern . . . After the success of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the demand was very much for “museum sculptures.”

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you consider yourself a “green” architect?

BAN: I hate that word, which is used so much these days. When I started getting involved in humanitarian or ecological questions, no one was really interested in the subject. I made the Kobe church from tubes of paper in 1995, but I’d started developing the idea of structures made from paper as early as 1986.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you feel you have a genius for inventing materials?

BAN: Not really. My main principle consists of reusing or recycling pre-existing materials. It took me several years to work out how to use the paper tubes. Today, I’m working on using sand for some condominiums in Dubai.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Hasn’t the work been stopped because of the current economic crisis?

BAN: To my great surprise, no, it hasn’t. But to go back to the previous question, people are always asking me what my next material is going to be. I don’t have any one material of predilection. The paper tubes represent barely 10 percent of my production. The architect Louis Khan had a beautiful expression. He said something like, “You have to listen to the will of the brick,” meaning, you have to use materials to function as what they’re destined for.

BENHAMOU-HUET: How did the idea for the rolls of paper come to you in the first place?

BAN: By observing the solidity of rolls of fax paper. It took me three years before I put the idea into practice, in Nagoya, in 1989. I did a lot of tests, and I finalized my research. Paper has become a part of my visual vocabulary. You know, paper is an industrial material. You can do almost anything with it. Wood, for example, is much more difficult to adapt to different needs.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you like readdressing pre-conceived ideas?

BAN: For me, there’s no difference between what’s temporary and what’s definitive. I built the church in Kobe, which was supposed to be temporary, and people liked it so much that there’s a version of it still there today—unlike some concrete buildings that were just built for money and that can be destroyed from one day to the next. Concrete can be very fragile during earthquakes.

BENHAMOU-HUET: At the end of the day you find your inspiration in day-to-day life, don’t you? What was the origin for your roofs in the shape of Chinese hats, like the one in your prospective project for the airport in Zagreb, Croatia, which you won second place for in the competition, or the one at the Centre Pompidou-Metz?

BAN: It was in 1989, in Paris, on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. I came out of a restaurant, and I went into a store—La Maison de la Chine. I bought a traditional wicker Chinese hat. I was struck by its architectural shape. I took it as an example and it became the basis for my reflection on a weaving system in timber.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you consider the Kobe church your masterpiece?

BAN: It had a big effect on me. Before, I was in some ways envious of other people. From then on I understood that what I did could have a real impact.

BENHAMOU-HUET: What was your most recent success in terms of architecture?

BAN: This past summer I built a school with my Japanese students in the area in China where there was the earthquake. Twenty of my students collaborated with a local Chinese team. It took them one month to build nine classrooms using a structure of paper tubes. Here—in the Centre Pompidou—we’re in a similar structure. It took my students three months to build it. When I asked them why it took them three months to build it in Paris and only one month in China, they said it was because there was so much else to do in Paris in the evenings. [laughs]

BENHAMOU-HUET: Is being famous important to you?

BAN: Not really, but you come to realize that the more well known you are, the easier things get. The technical problems go away, and people listen to you and have more faith in you.