Shigeru Ban Wins the 2025 American Prize for Architecture: Why His Humanitarian Design Matters More Than Ever

In 2025, Japanese architect Shigeru Ban was awarded the American Prize for Architecture, a major international honor recognizing architects whose work has made a lasting contribution to the built environment. Unlike many architectural awards that focus primarily on iconic buildings or formal innovation, this recognition highlights something deeper: architecture as a humanitarian service.

Shigeru Ban’s selection reinforces a growing global consensus that architecture is not only about form, prestige, or luxury, but also about human dignity, responsibility, and social impact.

• Understanding the American Prize for Architecture

• American Prize for Architecture



The American Prize for Architecture is awarded by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, in collaboration with the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies. It honors architects whose work demonstrates excellence, leadership, and cultural relevance, particularly those who advance architecture’s role in addressing real-world challenges.

In awarding Shigeru Ban, the jury emphasized his longstanding commitment to humanitarian design, sustainability, and ethical practice—values that extend beyond any single building.

Who Is Shigeru Ban?

Shigeru Ban is internationally known for challenging conventional assumptions about architectural materials and purpose. While many architects are celebrated for steel, concrete, or glass monuments, Ban is equally famous for building with paper tubes, recycled cardboard, timber, and locally available materials.

He is not an architect who waits for commissions alone. Instead, he is one who consistently asks a difficult question:

• What is the role of architecture when people have lost everything?

This question has shaped his career for more than three decades.

Humanitarian Architecture as a Core Practice

What sets Shigeru Ban apart—and ultimately led to his 2025 American Prize—is that humanitarian work is not a side project for him. It is central to his architectural identity.

Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN)

In 1995, following the Kobe earthquake in Japan, Ban founded the Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN). Through VAN, he and other architects design and construct temporary shelters, community buildings, and emergency housing for people displaced by disasters.

These projects are not symbolic gestures. They are functional, dignified, and quickly deployable structures, often built with local labor and minimal cost.

Signature Humanitarian Projects

Some of Shigeru Ban’s most influential works include:

• Paper Log Houses – Low-cost shelters built from cardboard tubes and simple foundations, used in disaster zones across Japan, Rwanda, Turkey, India, and the Philippines.

• Paper Log Houses

• Cardboard Cathedral, Christchurch (New Zealand) – A temporary yet spiritually powerful cathedral constructed after the 2011 earthquake, demonstrating that emergency architecture can still be meaningful and beautiful.

• Cardboard Cathedral, Christchurch (New Zealand)

• Refugee Housing Projects – Community-focused shelters designed to restore privacy, order, and dignity in overcrowded refugee camps.

• Refugee Housing Projects

These projects challenge the idea that emergency architecture must be temporary, ugly, or purely utilitarian.

Why the 2025 Award Is Significant

Shigeru Ban received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2014, often described as the “Nobel Prize of Architecture.” However, the 2025 American Prize for Architecture is particularly significant because it explicitly recognizes humanitarian impact, not just architectural excellence.

This award sends a strong message to the global architectural community:

• Architecture is most powerful when it serves people, not prestige.

At a time when climate change, urban displacement, and natural disasters are increasing worldwide, Ban’s work offers a model for ethical architectural practice.

Lessons for Architects and the Built Environment

Shigeru Ban’s recognition offers important lessons for architects, students, and built-environment professionals:

• 1. Material innovation should serve human needs, not just aesthetics.

• 2. Architectural skills carry social responsibility, especially during crises.

• 3. Sustainability is not optional—it is fundamental to ethical design.

• 4. Architecture can restore dignity, even in the most difficult circumstances.

For young architects, Ban’s career demonstrates that it is possible to achieve global recognition without abandoning moral purpose.

Beyond Architecture

Shigeru Ban’s work resonates beyond professional circles. It influences urban policy, disaster response planning, sustainability discourse, and humanitarian aid strategies. His approach encourages collaboration between architects, governments, NGOs, and communities.

The 2025 American Prize for Architecture therefore recognizes not only an individual architect, but a vision of architecture as public service.

Conclusion

Shigeru Ban’s award is not just a celebration of past achievements—it is a call to action for the future of architecture. By honoring his humanitarian-focused design work, the American Prize for Architecture reinforces the idea that the true value of architecture lies in its ability to improve lives.

As global challenges intensify, Ban’s philosophy offers a clear direction:

build responsibly, build ethically, and build for humanity.