Praemium Imperiale to Shigeru Ban

The five recipients of the 35th Praemium Imperiale were announced today, September 10, in Tokyo, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and New York. Per the Japan Art Association, “The artists are recognized and awarded for their international achievements in the arts and their role in enriching the global community.” The 2024 laureates are:

• Painting: Sophie Calle (France)
• Sculpture: Doris Salcedo (Colombia)
• Architecture: Shigeru Ban (Japan)
• Music: Maria João Pires (Portugal/Switzerland)
• Theatre/Film: Ang Lee (Republic of China, Taiwan)

Shigeru Ban follows Francis Kéré as architecture laureate and comes two years after fellow Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa / SANAA were recognized. Previous recipients in the category have included Glenn Murcutt (2021), Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (2019), Christian de Portzamparc (2018), Rafael Moneo (2017), Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2016), Dominique Perrault (2015), and Steven Holl (2014). No awards were given in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

Like Kéré, SANAA, Murcutt, de Portzamparc, and others before him, Ban is yet another architect who is a recipient of both the Praemium Imperiale and the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which he won in 2014. The Pritzker was established in 1979 while the Praemium Imperiale gave out its first prizes in 1989. Of the 35 Praemium Imperiale recipients in the architecture category, 27 of them have also garnered Pritzker Prizes. In most cases the Praemium Imperiale follows the Pritzker, with the Japan Art Association beating the Pritzker to the punch in just seven instances.

Given his numerous awards, which also include the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord in 2022, Ban needs very little in the way of introduction. Born in Tokyo in 1957, Ban moved to the United States after high school, studying architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and The Cooper Union in New York City. He worked for Arata Isozaki & Associates between schools and then, after graduating from Cooper Union, he established his own eponymous studio in Tokyo in 1985.

Early works were in the realms of exhibition design, furniture, houses, and commercial projects, but then in 1995, while working as an advisor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ban built a shelter out of paper tubes in a Rwandan refugee camp and temporary housing for victims of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. These experiences led him to found the Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN), an NGO that provides architectural relief to refugees and disaster victims around the world.

Even today, nearly 40 years after the founding of Shigeru Ban Architects (SBA) and with nearly 30 years of VAN projects, Ban's architecture is still defined by these two realms: private houses and public buildings, on the one hand, and socially responsible, disaster-relief projects, on the other. Bridging them is his desire to create unique structures using cardboard, wood, and other materials in innovative and original ways. The award announcement contends that Ban “continues to fulfill his mission as an architect in times of peace and in times of crisis” and quotes Ban as saying, “I design houses and public buildings, but disaster relief is my life's work.”

In its announcement, the Japan Art Association singles out just three building designed by SBA — the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2010) La seine musicale (2017), and the Swatch Omega Factory (2019) — while also mentioning the importance of the Japan Pavilion at the 2000 Hannover Expo, in which he collaborated with architect/engineer Frei Otto, another Praemium laureate and Pritzker Prize winner, “further enhancing Ban’s structural skills.”

Other notable buildings designed by SBA are many, including the Curtain Wall House (1995), the Paper House (1995), the GC Osaka Building (2000), the Nomadic Museum (2005), the Tamedia New Office Building (2013), and the Aspen Art Museum (2014). Projects in the realm of disaster relief are also varied formally, programmatically, and geographically, with a few highlights being the Paper Church – Kobe (1995), the Cardboard Cathedral (2013), and the Paper Partition System (2016).

Each Praemium Imperiale laureate receives an honorarium of 15 million yen ($105,000 USD) and a testimonial letter, with medals presented by Prince Hitachi to follow at an awards ceremony in Tokyo on November 19, 2024.