A few days ago we talked on our blog about a hospital built in wood and cardboard more than 100 years ago at Vall Fosca and still standing. The cardboard, against what many people think, is a very resistant material and is demonstrated with its increasing applications every day. For years, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, winner of the 2014 Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize in Architecture, has used cardboard tubes in his constructions.
In its award citation, the Pritzker Prize jury noted that “Shigeru Ban is able to see opportunities to use standard components and common materials, such as paper tubes, packaging materials or shipping containers, in new ways.” And this is what Ban has been doing for years: adapting common, easy-to-obtain, inexpensive materials for his buildings. The jury also noted that “his own studio, located on a rooftop terrace at the Centre Pompidou in Paris during the six years he worked on the Metz Museum project, was built from cardboard tubes and a membrane covering the arched roof.”
In 2013, Ban designed a temporary school after an earthquake hit Ya’na city, Sichuan, China. The school had dimensions of 6 x 21 meters with a composite structure of cardboard tubes, wooden ties, metal angles and steel cables.
Ban's use of cardboard tubes to build shelters following natural disasters goes back a long way. In 1995, after a major earthquake in Hansobe-Awaji left 310,000 people homeless, he created the first Paper Log House. To build it, he used cardboard tubes as walls and beer crates containing sandbags as foundations. These structures became a prototype for inexpensive, comfortable housing to respond to natural disasters.
After the tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 and caused a flood of refugees, Ban devised compartments to ensure the privacy of those who stayed in classrooms and gyms. For construction precisely used paper tubes, canvases and nails with those who built walls in just a few hours.
Also in 2011 he designed and built one cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New ZealandAfter an earthquake hit the city. This population has recently become news, unfortunately, as a result of the terrorist attack on the Islamic community by an Australian white supremacist.
In July 2018 Ban mobilized his Voluntary Architects Network (VAN) to come to the aid of the victims of devastating floods in southern Japan, in which more than 200 people died.
In Japan built evacuation centers with paper tubes and cloth curtains. They were temporary structures whose intention was to offer privacy for flood victims, forming a modular unit of 2×2 meters.
Despite being exposed to weather, Ban has ensured that the strength of the cardboard tubes has increased considerably due to the hardening of the glue used in its manufacturing process. This is why it is increasingly using them in more parts of the construction process.
