Japanese architect Shigeru Ban wins 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has won the 2014 Pritzker Architect Prize for his contribution to humanity and innovative use of everyday materials.

Ban, 56, was commended by the judges for his unique approach in using materials such as paper tubes, bamboo and shipping containers.

For two decades, the architect has built temporary accommodation from cardboard and paper in a number of disaster sites from the 1994 Rwanda conflict to the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

He was later hired by the United Nations as a consultant after he proposed his paper-tube shelters to the Unites Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

After the Kobe Earthquake in 1995, he built a “Paper Log House” for the former Vietnamese refugees who could not live in the temporary houses provided by the Japanese government.

He later built a cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, following the 2011 earthquake.

Outside his humanitarian work, Ban’s noted projects have included the Centre Pompidou-Metz, a modern art museum in Metz, France, that features a remarkable curved roof made of timber.

Judges also noted his “Naked House” in Saitama, Japan, which uses clear corrugated plastic on the external walls and white acrylic stretched across a timber frame, to create a home that questions “the traditional notion of rooms and consequently domestic life”.

But it is Ban’s humanitarian work that the Pritzker jury emphasised in announcing the prize.

“Where others may see insurmountable challenges, Ban sees a call to action,” the jury said in a statement.

Born in Tokyo in 1957, Ban studied at the Southern California Institute of Architecture before setting up his own Tokyo-based practice in 1985.

Speaking about winning the Pritzker Prize, which is often referred to as the Nobel Prize for architecture, Ban said he felt he did not deserve the award.

“It’s too early. I haven’t achieved enough, so I am taking this as encouragement of my future work,” he said.

The architect added he was lucky to work in an industry where he could make people happy through creating new buildings.

“Sometimes people are so happy in my temporary shelters that they don’t want to move out,” he said.

“And the same with my work for private clients. The satisfaction is the same — I just love to make nice spaces for people to enjoy.”

Take from: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/architecture/japanese-architect-shigeru-ban-wins-2014-pritzker-architecture-prize-9213921.html

Sainsbury Laboratory wins Stirling architecture prize

An £82m plant research centre at the University of Cambridge has won the UK’s most prestigious architecture award, the Stirling Prize.

The Sainsbury Laboratory was named best new building by the Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) at a ceremony in Manchester.

Judges praised the “calm beauty” of the winner, designed by Stanton Williams.

It beat nominees including London’s Olympic Stadium and the Hepworth art gallery in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.

The other buildings on the shortlist were Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, the Maggie’s cancer care centre in Glasgow and New Court, the home of the Rothschild bank in the City of London.

The two-storey Sainsbury Laboratory sits on the edge of the University of Cambridge’s botanic gardens and provides state-of-the-art facilities for 120 botanists carrying out research into plant development.

Stirling Prize judge and architect Joanna van Heyningen described it as an “extraordinarily good building”.

The researchers “deserve the best possible space in which to work, and that’s what they’ve been given”, she told BBC News.

“It’s a completely sublime building with the most extraordinary, beautifully designed natural light,” she added.

The site was funded by Lord Sainsbury, a former science minister and ex-chairman of the Sainsbury’s supermarket, who said scientists had traditionally had to put up with “appalling” buildings.

Stanton Williams received a £20,000 prize. Director Alan Stanton described the design as a 21st Century cloister, which encouraged scientists to interact and exchange ideas.

“Two scientists working on two pieces of research could bump into each other in the corridor and have a eureka moment, and say, my God, there’s the possibility of some really interesting scientific breakthrough here,” he said.

“Quite often, accidents are important, in science as they are in any creative endeavour. The building is there to try to ambush scientists into meeting and talking.”

Stanton Williams was the only practice to have three buildings on the longlist for this year’s Stirling Prize.

Its other entries were the Hackney Marshes Centre in east London and the new campus for Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design at King’s Cross.

The practice has previously built the Compton Verney art gallery in Warwickshire and the Millennium Seed Bank in Wakehurst, West Sussex.

‘Dreadful’ state

The Olympic Stadium lost out despite being one of the most high-profile buildings of the year.

The Stirling Prize is awarded to the best building constructed in the European Union and designed in the UK.

The Olympic Stadium was the most high-profile structure on the shortlist – but it missed out one year after the Olympic velodrome lost out on the same award.

Last year’s winner was the Evelyn Grace Academy, a secondary school in Brixton, south London, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects.

This year’s ceremony came after two judges were reported as saying that British architecture was in a “dreadful” state.

Sir Mark Jones told The Independent newspaper there was a “lack of feeling and lack of care” in many retail, residential and office developments, while fellow judge and Naomi Cleaver said local authorities were “rather unfocused and arbitrary” in their decision making.

Taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19923820