Japanese architect Shigeru Ban and his company, Shigeru Ban Architects, are donating their time and skills to make the Colliers Kirinda project the benchmark of excellence that others are now encouraged to emulate.
Shigeru Ban is a world-class Japanese architect with offices in Paris and Tokyo , famous for his innovative work building homes for disaster victims from recycled paper. In 2005 he added to his many international accolades by winning the 40 th annual Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture.
Born in Tokyo in 1957, Ban left as a youth to study architecture under John Hejduk, the legendary dean of New York's Cooper Union School of Architecture. Upon returning to Tokyo, he apprenticed with Arata Isozaki, set up his own studio in 1985 and now teaches. Ban has become one of the forerunning Japanese architects, embracing the combination of Western and Eastern building forms and methods.
Ban's signature contribution, however, is humanitarian. After the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, Ban responded with inspired designs for temporary houses and a community center, all out of cardboard tubes. Since then, his work has provided refugee housing in Turkey, India, Rwanda and now Sri Lanka.
Although he was asked by over 10 interested parties to design post-tsunami housing, it was the Sri Lanka project that appealed to him the most. He chose Colliers' Sri Lanka project because "it was for a smaller community and a minority group in a more difficult situation." As the architect for this project, Ban has designed homes for 67 families in the small fishing
village
of Kirinda.
www.shigerubanarchitects.com
