Shigeru Ban has won the Praemium Imperiale Architecture Award, a prestigious global arts prize awarded annually by the Japan Art Association. Nominees are proposed by six international committees, each chaired by an International Advisor. The prize is celebrated as a mark of distinction in the arts.
Toyota City Museum, 2024, ©︎ The Japan Art Association / The Sankei Shimbun
Winner of 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban is renowned for his innovative work with timber, paper and bamboo structures. Mt. Fuji World Heritage Centre, 2017 Shizuoka, Japan, Photo by Hiroyuki Hirai. Courtesy of Shigeru Ban Architects
He is as celebrated for designing Centre Pompidou-Metz, Aspen Art Museum and Mt.Fuji World Heritage Centre as he is for establishing the NPO Voluntary Architects Network (VAN) in 1995.Simose Art Museum, 2023. Photo: Hiroyuki Hirai. Courtesy of Shigeru Ban Architects
VAN and Shigeru Ban Architects have carried out disaster relief activities for nearly 30 years, providing temporary shelter, partition systems, community centres and spiritual places for victims of natural disasters and conflicts in countries including Rwanda, Syria, Turkey India, China, Italy, Haiti and Ban’s native Japan.
Aspen Art Museum, 2014. Photo Michael Moran/OTTO - Images courtesy of the Aspen Art Museum
Most recently, Ban supplied Paper Partition System for shelters for Ukrainian refugees inside Ukraine, neighbouring Poland and Slovakia as well as Germany and France. The system designed by Ban ensures privacy for inhabitants and has been used in numerous evacuations centres for major earthquakes in Japan as well as the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake. Hospital in Lviv, 2024, Ukraine. Exterior. Courtesy of Voluntary Architects’ Network + Shigeru Ban Architects
Currently, Shigeru Ban is involved in building a new surgical wing for the main hospital in Lviv, the largest in Ukraine, which is in urgent need of expansion in order to respond to the exponential increase of patients since the conflict in the area.
In front of Centre Pompidou Metz (2010), May 2024. Photo: Shun Kambe. ©︎ The Japan Art Association
About the Praemium Imperiale Awards
The awards are given by the Japan Art Association under the honorary patronage of HIH Prince Hitachi, younger brother of the Emperor Emeritus of Japan. Each Laureate receives an honorarium of 15 million Yen (c. £73,000).
Since 1989, the Praemium Imperiale Awards have been given annually in the categories of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Theatre/Film; covering fields of achievement not represented by the Nobel Prizes. The Laureates are selected from a list submitted by six International Advisors to the Japan Art Association. In order to maintain the Awards' mandate to select candidates who have made a major international impact in their particular field, the International Advisors for the Awards and their committees are committed to looking beyond their own national boundaries for ground-breaking artists to recommend to the Japan Art Association.
Previous Architecture Laureates include Renzo Piano, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, David Chipperfield, Zaha Hadid.
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Press release and photos courtesy of Shigeru Ban Architects
Cover photo: Shigeru Ban, ©︎ The Japan Art Association / The Sankei Shimbun
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