Shigeru Ban There are a few ineluctable facts about buildings. They are expensive, time consuming and labor intensive to make. They are strongest if built from the sturdiest materials.

Well, no, on all counts. Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has built homes, pavilions and churches, some of them permanent, using little more than cardboard tubes. "I was interested in weak materials," says Ban, 42. "Whenever we invent a new material or new structural system, a new architecture comes out of it."

Brief History 1957 –Born in Tokyo –Studied at Southern California Institute of Architecture –Studied at Cooper Union School of Architecture –Worked for Arata Isozaki, Tokyo 1984 –Received Bachelor of Architecture from Cooper Union 1985 –Established private practice in Tokyo –Consultant of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) –Established VAN(NGO) Major Awards 1995 –Minichi Design Prize 1996 –Yoshioka Prize, Shinkenchiku Jutaku Tokusyu –JIA Kansai Architects Prize 1997 –JIA Prize for the Best Young Architect of the Year

Ironically, Ban may be closer to the old modernist ideals than many who build today in glass and steel. He wants beauty to be attainable by the masses, even the poorest.

Ban first began to use the tubes in the '80s, in exhibitions. Impressed by the material's load-bearing capacity (he calls cardboard "improved wood"), he thought of them again in 1995, after the Kobe earthquake, and used donated 34-ply tubes to build a community hall and houses.

Working with the U.N., Ban has shipped paper log houses to Turkey and Rwanda. "Refugee shelter has to be beautiful," he says. "Psychologically, refugees are damaged. They have to stay in nice places." But it's not all about utility. Ban has managed to turn ugly-duckling cardboard into some gorgeous swans.

Although Ban has become an icon for advocates of "green" and "eco-friendly" architecture, MacDonald says that the real intention behind his work is slightly different. "It's really more an ideology against waste. It's also about invention, curiosity, discovery, and about tackling problems with great relish and with a sense of humor," he said.

Can you really make part of a building out of recycled paper? A Japanese architect recently became the first person in the world to do so. Ban Shigeru has always hated to throw anything away. That is why he decided to build things with cylinders made of recycled paper.

He joined forces with a manufacturer of paper cylinders to find how to make cylinders extra strong, durable, and water and fire resistant. The research paid off in 1993, when the government began permitting the use of paper cylinders in architectural structures.

Ban says he wants his buildings to respond to social needs. After a horrific earthquake struck the Kobe region in 1995, he designed Community Dome, a meeting place for people who were affected by the earthquake.

He and a number of volunteers erected pillars made out of recycled paper at the site of a church destroyed by the quake. The 58 pillars, each one 5 meters tall and 33 centimeters in diameter, support a beautiful oval dome, bringing an element of security to the victims of the earthquake.

Paper pillars are relatively cheap to make, and the paper is recyclable. The cylinders can even be beautiful. When a structure made with these paper pillars is demolished, the paper can be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.

designed by shigeru ban, the carta screen from cappellini is primarily constructed of recycled material. the series of tubes is connected by two belts in white fabric. 98.4" x 70.9"h

a paper lounge

a paper chair

Shigero Ban does cool things with materials that we often ignore. Beauty is not a raw material, but rather something that human beings 'grow'. Beauty is a human concept. Nature just creates stuff that works, and that is inter-related. We call it beautiful, like a flower, or ugly, like an intestine, but that is our laying on of a description. To nature, it is all just working stuff.