re-coverMAKING CARDBOARD COUNT
Many of Shigeru Ban’s pro bono disaster-relief projects,
including the following, utilise surprisingly sturdy
cardboard rolls, bringing costs down significantly. Ban’s
fund-raising efforts and donations from others also help
translate his creativity into reality.
1 Paper Emergency Shelters for the UN Refugee Agency
Byumba Refugee Camp, Rwanda, 1999
Cost: US$50 per shelter
(The price of five movie tickets in Singapore)
2 Paper Log Houses
Kobe, Japan, 1995
Cost: Less than US$2,000 per unit
(Less than the cost of one bottle of Krug’s Clos d’Ambonnay
champagne)
3 Container Temporary Housing
Onagawa, Miyagi, 2011
Cost: US$465,000 for 189 apartments (about US$2,460 per
apartment)
(Less than the cost of a two-year Apple iPhone 6 premium
contract in Singapore)
4 Cardboard Cathedral
Christchurch, New Zealand, 2013
Rebuilding the church with cardboard cost only one-tenth
the budget compared to rebuilding with stone.
Cost: NZ$5.9 million (US$4.5 million)
(The cost of a 30-second commercial on the NBC TV network
during the US 2015 Super Bowl championships)headquarters in San Francisco and filed for bankruptcy
in February. Among the reasons for the abrupt closure
was the severe lack of funds for disaster relief shelter
projects. Just as pressing is the lack of interested
architects – a situation that can and has forced disaster-
affected communities to take what they are offered,
even though the shelter solution may not be ideal for
their culture or climate.
The need for architects has never been greater.
“Builders cannot tell you if a building is suitable for
the culture or climate of the region,” says Dr Ahmed.
“They merely tell you if the building will stand.” The
architect, however, has to re-cover a lost humanity.
With the capacity to satisfy the basic human need for
shelter, post-disaster architects like Shigeru Ban put the
afflicted before the affluent and prove, time and again,
that the most important works of art arise from the
greatest of adversities. agbelow Financed by donations
worldwide, the Paper
Partition System 4 in Japan
offers some comfort to
hundreds of families forced
to seek temporary refuge
VOLUNTARY ARCHITECTS' NETWORK