. Master of innovation

                          Challenging accepted notions of architecture

Famed Japanese architect Shigeru Ban attended SCI-Arc in California and earned his degree at the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York. With offices in Tokyo and Paris, Ban consistently challenges accepted notions of architecture, designing a house without walls, or an exhibition space made from paper tubes and shipping containers. This survey traces his entire career to date, showing clearly why he is one of the world's most innovative and significant architects. Unlike many of his peers, Ban can create remarkable residences and still find time to design emergency relief housing for disaster areas from Kobe to New Orleans. Often using paper or cardboard tubes as a structural element, his designs give new meaning to the term "Paper Architect." His major completed works include the Furniture House at Lake Yamanaka, Japan, the Curtain Wall House in Tokyo, the Naked House in Kawagoe, Japan, the Japanese Pavilionat Hannover Expo 2000, the mobile Nomadic Museum, and his most recent masterpiece, the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France.

About the Series: Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Architecture Series features: approximately 120 images, including photographs, sketches, drawings, and floor plans introductory essays exploring the architect's life and work, touching on family and background as well as collaborations with other architects the most important works presented in chronological order, with descriptions of client and/or architect wishes as well as construction problems and resolutions an appendix including a list of complete or selected works, biography, bibliography, and a map indicating the locations of the architect's most famous buildings

The author: Philip Jodidio (born 1954) studied art history and economics at Harvard, and edited Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His books include TASCHEN’s Architecture Now! series, and monographs on Tadao Ando, Norman Foster, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Zaha Hadid. He is internationally renowned as one of the most popular writers on the subject of architecture.