Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/315051
says Ban. (When asked why more architects don't follow his lead, lending a hand in a crisis with this kind of work, he replies, "Maybe you should ask them.") Ban's regular practice takes him all over the world, from residential projects like the Curtain Wall House in Tokyo (with two-story-high walls made from white curtains) to commercial ones like a striking new headquarters for Swatch and Omega watches going up in Biel, Switzerland. The latter includes what his office calls a "flowing timber grid-shell roof." "Wood is such a wonderful material, and it's the only re- newable one," says Ban, who likes to work entirely with inter- locking wood beams, without steel joints, if he can. "Once you start using steel connections, the timber becomes an or- nament. It's more interesting to explore the limitation s of the material." In the United States, Ban first gained attention for 2005's Nomadic Museum, made entirely out of shipping con- tainers, which first touched down in New York for a show of Gregory Colbert's photographs called "Ashes and Snow." Since then, he has also designed an apartment and gallery building called Metal Shutter Houses in Chelsea, with chic- looking retractable screens facing the stre et. Ban doesn't think of himself as a Japanese architect, in part because of his education. He heard about New York's Cooper Union when he was in high school. "It was before the Internet," he says. "I flew to New York only to find they didn't accept foreign students." He enrolled at the Southern Cali- fornia Institute of Architecture for a time, just so he could get back to Cooper Union, where he graduat ed from the School of Architecture in 1984. Now, his most high-profile U.S. project is opening this summer: the 35,000-square-foot Aspen Art Museum. "The site is in the middle of downtown, and it was quite disappoint- ing when I first saw it," says Ban. "I couldn't see mountains or anything." His agile mind unpacked the problem and turned weak- ness into strength. "The site was small in terms of having a big foyer, so I made the foyer on top of the roof," he says. "You take the grand stair or the elevator up there to enjoy the view of the mountains and then come down to look at the galleries and art." He adds of starting at the top: "It's the same sequence when you ski." The building is going to be a showplace for Aspen's con- temporary art exhibitions, in part because of its post-ten- sioned slab constr uction, allowing for huge open spaces with no columns. The largest gallery is an obstruction-free 4,000 square feet—"gasp-making," says the museum's director, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson. The Aspen project has the quality of singularity Ban brings to everything he touches. It makes sense that when it comes to naming his own architectural heroes, he mentions Frei Otto and Buckminster Fuller, two engineering masters and contrarian thinkers from the past. "They invented their own materials and ways of structur- ing," says Ban, asserting the independence that has now rocketed him into architecture's first ranks. "That's what I want to do: develop my own materials and structures. That way I don't have to follow the style and fashion of the day." 146 CULTURED "I want to develop my own materials and structures. That way I don't have to follow the style and fashion of the day." —Shigeru Ban