Putting up a humanitarian shelter in the event of a calamity or disaster is a big challenge. Cost, quick construction, availability of materials, and transport are all factors that need to be considered when designing. 2014’s Pritzker Prize-winning Shigeru Ban’s work is most associated with innovative design in paper and wood. With consistent participation, his name is also synonymous with humanitarian design. Starting his practice in 1984 in Tokyo, Ban first developed the paper-tube structures for the Aalto exhibition of 1986 and he worked on a series of case study projects that employed paper-tube structures, bamboo, paper, and wood. This experimentation would later become the foundation for his humanitarian designs.
Paper-Tube Emergency Shelters & Paper-Log Houses
In the 1994 Rwandan Civil war, Shigeru Ban noticed the terrible living conditions of 2 million refugees. He proposed his paper-tube shelters to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and they hired him as a consultant. The UNHCR normally supplies 4m x 6m plastic sheets and aluminium poles as temporary shelters. The Rwandan refugees often sold these aluminium poles as scrap to get money for their food supplies and then cut down tree branches for structural support. Since deforestation was critical in the region, Shigeru Ban proposed a low-cost alternative to aluminium to support the plastic sheet – Paper Tubes. The paper tubes could be produced cheaply on-site, thereby reducing the transportation costs with simple and small machinery. This system became the basis for most of Ban’s humanitarian designs.
This paper tube frame shelter was later adapted for solving housing in other disasters, such as the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, where Ban tailored the design to local needs and available resources.
During the same period, in 1995, Ban built the paper-log houses as an inexpensive structure for the Kobe Earthquake in Japan. This house could be easily built or dismantled by anyone, with satisfactory insulation, and an acceptable appearance, and recycled afterwards. This cabin had a foundation of sand-filled beer crates, walls of paper tubes, and a roof and ceiling made of tent membranes.
Ban made sure to include regional variations in the design of the Paper-log house to better suit the locations where they were built. The paper-log house for the Gujarat Earthquake in 2001 had the foundation made from the rubble of destroyed buildings. It was topped by the traditional mud floor seen in the region. Ban used his signature paper tubes for the walls of the cabin. For the roof, split bamboo was used for the rib vaults and whole bamboo for the ridge beams, covered by two mats of woven bamboo sandwiching a plastic tarp.
Paper Partition System
The Paper Partition System (PPS), was an innovative and practical solution by Shigeru Ban to one of the most overlooked challenges in disaster relief: privacy. The displaced people often find themselves in large communal shelters, such as gyms or auditoriums, where the lack of personal space exacerbates their distress. The PPS is a cost-effective, quick-to-assemble, and dignified way to create partitions in shared living spaces. The system is built primarily from cardboard tubes and fabric panels, materials that are lightweight, recyclable, and affordable. Its modular nature allows it to be adapted to different settings and requirements, making it a versatile solution for humanitarian design shelters worldwide. It was first used in response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster in 2004, which displaced millions across Southeast Asia. Later it was also employed in the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and more recently in the 2022 Ukraine Refugee Crisis & 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquake.
Earth-based Housing projects
In the earthquake and its resulting tsunami of 2004 in Sri Lanka, one of the most devastated areas was Kirinda, a small community of Muslim fishermen located on the country’s southern coast. The reconstruction project, headed by Shigeru Ban comprising fifty houses, was a collaborative process in which the community participated to adapt the design to its needs. The property developer Phillip Bay wanted to treat this like a development project and not like a typical disaster relief effort where the approach was ‘build quick and leave’. The houses were built with local materials like mud, wood and fired clay tiles. Bricks were made by compressing with on-site clay and cement. The main rooms of the living & Bedroom were separated from the Kitchen and Bath by a covered space that opened to the exterior. This area of transition functions also as a gathering place among neighbours or as a workshop to repair the fishing nets.
Wooden Prefabricated Temporary Housing
The Kumamoto Wooden prefabricated housing of 2016 was a relatively smaller housing complex of three temporary timber buildings for ten families who were victims of the Kumamoto Earthquake in Japan. The effort from Shigeru Ban was to minimize work on-site and to shorten the construction period. The structural panels made from Timber and plywood were prefabricated at the factory and then brought to the site.
Shipping Containers system
Built with shipping containers, this community was created to address the shortage of housing after the 2011 earthquake of 2011 in Onagawa, Japan. Unlike Shigeru Ban’s other humanitarian designs, the challenge here was the lack of land for construction. This was solved by stacking shipping containers in a checkerboard pattern up to a height of three stories. The system created bright, open living spaces between the containers which helped reduce construction time and improve the climatic performance. To improve the storage systems, installed wood shelves and cabinets in the rooms.
Placing the housing units in three-story rows freed up space in the centre of the site for public facilities such as a market, a workshop, and a community centre. They were also built using shipping containers combined with textile roofs, wood, and paper tubes.
Styrofoam Housing System
The Styrofoam Housing System is a panel-type housing that can be easily assembled by non-skilled workers designed by Ban for housing Ukrainian refugees. It uses lightweight panels made of extruded polystyrene insulation foam called Styrofoam wrapped in Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic (GFRP). Since the material is a staple in many industries, the price is stable as compared to construction materials which can significantly vary depending on the demand.
