Interview

BENHAMOU-HUET: Why do you have offices in three different cities around the world?

BAN: I have associates in three countries—Japan, the United States, and France. In New York, I’m in business with a friend, a former classmate of mine from Cooper Union. We’re doing a building in Chelsea, the “Metal Shutter Houses.” It should be finished in August. It’s being built in keeping with the surrounding area. It’s a work on the idea of transparency. Because the site is in the shadow of high-rise buildings for much of the day, each residential unit has been designed with doubly high spaces on the southern side with retractable glass shutters. In the United States, I’ve also just won the competition for the Aspen Art Museum, which reuses the principle of a roof in the shape of a Chinese hat.

BENHAMOU-HUET: In France, you and your team won the competition for the Centre Pompidou-Metz. What’s your interest in working in France?

BAN: Here, I’ve received a medal from the National Order of Merit. There’s no such thing in Japan. Here, you’re chosen, people put their trust in you, and the projects you’re given help you to move forward. Look at Renzo Piano. He was given the Centre Pompidou, and he made his way from there.

BENHAMOU-HUET: What do you do when you travel?

BAN: I watch the films offered in airplanes one after another. I spend so much time in airplanes! I eat too, and I sleep, and I read Chinese or Japanese historical novels.

BENHAMOU-HUET: What do you enjoy doing outside of architecture?

BAN: Eating. Eating well. I wouldn’t like working in a country where the food’s no good. But don’t ask me which countries. I won’t say.

BENHAMOU-HUET: What kind of architecture do people need today?

BAN: They need love. Today there are no more rules in urBANism. It’s the property developers who decide how to build towns. Their aim is to make money. You need love to carry out good projects.

BENHAMOU-HUET: What is your next objective?

BAN: I want to find a balance between my humanitarian work and the rest. You know, there was a journalist from The New York Times who called me the accidental environmentalist.

BENHAMOU-HUET: Do you have any regrets in your professional life?

BAN: Yes, all those projects done for architecture competitions that didn’t get built. That’s painful. All that work . . . But it’s the same thing for all architects.

Judith Benhamou-Huet is a Paris-based journalist.