THE PIN–UP QUOTE: SHIGERU BAN

I’m fascinated with any material and with finding out the potential beauty of it. I’m not developing anything new, just using existing structure differently. In the beginning paper was simply a replacement for timber. When I started working on my own, in 1986, I was asked to design the Alvar Aalto exhibition at the Axis Gallery in Tokyo. The budget was very low, and I couldn’t afford wood to build the installation, so I found paper tubes and I began testing paper as a material, and found out that waxed paper in particular is very strong. But you know, in the end, the fact that it’s paper doesn’t really matter.

Taken from an interview by Kevin Greenberg in PIN–UP 7, Fall Winter 2009/10.

Portrait by Devin Blair.