Sacred Site - cardboard church in Kobe, Japan

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 1999

This cardboard church is inventive constructionally and in terms of ritual.

Shigeru Ban's paper buildings are becoming well known, but the jury could not fail to commend the Roman Catholic church he and volunteers from the congregation built out of paper tubes after the 1995 Kobe earthquake (AR September 1996). Completed in five weeks, the church is clad in corrugated polycarbonate sheeting supported by 58 cardboard tubes 330mm in diameter, 15mm thick, 5m tall. Materials were contributed by many companies.

The cardboard columns are arranged in an ellipse, a shape influenced, says Ban, by Bernini. The skin forms a rectangle outside the oval, and the roof structure ties the two together, giving structural continuity and lateral stiffness. The difference between the two geometries allows an ambulatory round the central congregational space, so the whole forms a luminous and gentle space: an apt and tender response to the disaster. The jury was very impressed by the inventive command of technology, coupled with an understanding of the sacral and ability to work with community.

ARCHITECT

SHIGERU BAN