Without walls - architectural design of a house by Shigeru Ban

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 1998

In Japan interpretation of the house by an architect given to experiment has resulted in space at its most horizontally pure and abstract.

In the west, Shigeru Ban is best known for paper architecture, experimental buildings partly constructed with tubes built up from laminated layers of recycled paper. Combining them with other materials he has successfully designed a number of diverse buildings - a gallery and a library extension (AR August 1995), a church and paper log houses for refugees (AR September 1996). Such imaginative, environmentally friendly use of recycled paper is remarkable enough; but in exploiting the potential of paper - which is the most Japanese and the most insubstantial, of materials - he retains a rigorous architectural grip. Ban himself acknowledges the influence of the New York Five, in particular of John Hejduk under whom he studied at Cooper Union in the early '80s; and his spare elegant structures, strong geometries and fluid spaces express continuing exploration of Western ideas and their delicate fusion with Japanese tradition. This is also true of another body of work carried out over the last 10 years or so.(1) The Wall-less-House is the eighth in a series of case study houses; each one, designed for a willing client, is an architectural experiment, a vehicle for exploring the nature of space and the relationship of building to landscape. The enterprise was inspired by the Californian Case Study houses of the '50s, designed by architects such as Eames and Neutra as prototypes for living in a new age of technological optimism.

Riichi Miyake(2) describes Ban as an empirical architect 'not afraid of trial and error'. Implicit in his experiments with paper architecture is his interest in the potential of technology to change methods of construction, achieve economies and create more adventurous spaces. His delicate externally tensioned structure of cheap materials, designed for the first Case Study - the tiny 1-House - enclosed light-filled airy volumes and came in under budget, while imaginative use of the site provided the house with a prospect it would otherwise not have had. Ban often manipulates the familiar. The Furniture House for example, which is Case Study 4, is a dwelling constructed out of furniture. Apart from the novelty, the arrangement simplified construction; a shelving wall composed of self-supporting units, exactly sized and built off site, could be handled by a single person.

If there are characteristics common to what are a very diverse series of houses, they arise out of Ban's preference for fluid horizontal spaces, for decklike structures that often seem barely poised in the landscape. The Wall-less-House is his most extreme abstraction so far. Here, space for living has been reduced to a single pure volume described by an unimpeded flow of floor and roof. Minimally enclosed on three sides, the house is set among treetops and looks towards distant hills.

The site within a forest sloped sharply so the rear of the house was dug into the hill, and the excavated earth used to create a level floor. The embedded rear curls up to meet the roof and in doing so absorbs the backload of earth. By cantilevering the flat roof from the upturned slab, Ban was able to work with the most slender of vertical columns. Since the columns would bear only vertical loads, their diameter could be reduced to 55mm. Sliding panels pulled out from the rear wall and running along the inside edge of the surrounding terrace, replace external walls. The interior has a 'universal floor' on which the kitchen, bathroom and lavatory are positioned without enclosure; but such pure austerity can be mitigated by light sliding panels and cupboards. P.M.

1 'Shigeru Ban as an Empiricist' by Riichi Miyake, in The Japan Architect Monograph: Shigeru Ban, No 30, Summer 1998.

2 Ibid.