Educational Media Reviews Online

Motivated by the devastating Kobe earthquake, in 1994 in Japan, the award winning Japanese architect, Shigeru Ban, shows and comments on how he first used his skills as an architect to help Vietnamese refugees in Japan by designing and building the Kobe Paper Church in 1995. Ban’s research had made him aware that many emergency structures were not accepted or used by their intended tenants because of their cold industrial unsightliness and their inappropriate locations far removed from jobs, family, and resources. Furthermore, when the crisis period ended, such temporary structures were often abandoned to become unrecyclable eyesores, shunned by their communities. This film shows how Ban began to experiment by using inexpensive, recyclable paper tubes (paper tube structures (PTS) and other recycled materials like sand-filled beer bottle cases to construct attractive and permanent post-disaster structures that could be easily assembled in the event of a disaster, in collaboration with local students and other community volunteers.

The film also shows how Ban was later able to fund and build post-earthquake housing following the Kocaeli “Turkey Earthquake” in 1999, using the same materials and methods with students and community volunteers. The film goes on to explain how Ban used similar premises, techniques and materials to model and build the Japanese Pavilion for the 2000 Expo in Hanover, Germany in cooperation with Frei Otto, and also touches on other projects employing the similar materials, techniques and attention to vital concepts such as light and shade and well designed interiors. Among other structures featured are Ban’s Paper Dome, Gero, Japan; the House with Double Roof in Yamanake Lake, Japan; the 9 Square Grids House in Hadano; and others.

While the chronology of this film is sometimes confusing, it succeeds in offering an inspiring introduction to how Shigeru Ban has used his sensitivities and creativity to change the paradigm of disaster structures, making beautiful and livable structures that are also environmentally sound and inexpensive as well.