Biographical notes
Shigeru Ban, who was born in Tokyo in 1957, attended at Southern California Institute of Architecture and graduated from Cooper Union School of Architecture in 1984. In 1985, he established Shigeru Ban Architects, a private practice in Tokyo. In 1995, He started working as a consultant of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and at the same time established an NGO, Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN) in 1995. Renowned for his works with innovative ideas such as “Curtain Wall House”, “Japan Pavilion Hannover EXPO 2000”, “Nicolas G. Hayek Center”, “Centre Pompidou-Metz”, he is today based in his three offices at Tokyo, New York and Paris. Meanwhile, he contributes his knowledge, skills and energy for the disaster relief projects such as Paper Log House (Kobe of Japan in 1995, Turkey in 2000, India in 2002), Paper Church (Kobe,1995), Temporary Elementary School (Chengdu, China 2008) and Container Temporary Housing (Onagawa, Japan in 2011)  He has been awarded a number of prizes, including Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture (2005), l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France (2010) and Auguste Perret Prize(2011).  Jury of Pritzker Architecture Prize from 2007 to 2009, Professor at Keio University, Japan from 2001 to 2008, Visiting Professor of Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Visiting Professor of Cornell University(2010), and Professor of Kyoto University of Art and Design from 2011.