NEW YORK (AP) — The Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who has combined a talent for innovative design and experimental use of everyday materials with extensive humanitarian efforts around the globe, has won the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Fifty-six-year-old Ban is the seventh architect from Japan to receive the honor, which will be officially awarded in June. For two decades, he has rushed to the site of disasters — for example, the 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, or the 1994 conflict in Rwanda — to construct temporary relief shelters. He has often used cardboard paper tubes as building materials, since they are easily found, easily transported and can be water-proofed or fire-proofed.
Ban also designed the Centre Pompidou-Metz, a contemporary art museum in Metz, France.
He is based in Tokyo, Paris and New York.
