Most architects feel powerless in the face of major natural disasters. How can their design work help? It has never been an issue for Shigeru Ban, who for three decades now has engaged in pro-bono work whenever needed in wake of earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan or other countries around the world. Thus, after the massive earthquake that hit Kobe in 1955, he rapidly designed a temporary building in that city for the Takatori Catholic Church to provide a place of worship, the previous church having burned down during the disaster.
The building soon became known as the ‘Paper Church’ because it uses tubes made of recycled paper for its structure. These 5-metre-long paper tubes, of 15mm in thickness and 330mm in diameter, support a thin tent-like roof of a stretched white Teflon-coated polycarbonate fabric to keep the rain out. Ban’s primary driver was to make the scheme as low-cost and as easy-to-assemble as possible: indeed, the rebuilding was carried out in just 5 weeks by 160 unskilled church volunteers using the standardised system that Ban had designed.
The simplicity and elegance of the scheme is remarkable. In total there are 58 of the long paper tubes and they are arranged in an elliptical pattern such that the columns along the back wall of the oval are closely spaced together to create a backdrop for the church altar, whereas on the building’s entrance side the columns are placed further apart to allow people to filter through to enter the chapel. Around this ellipse is a rectangular box with openable doors along the whole length of the entrance side so that the church feels it is being extended to the outside.
Originally located on a tight urban site in Kobe, the building was added to before plans were drawn up for a more permanent structure for the Takatori Catholic Church. Thus, in June 2005, and following an earthquake centred on the city of Taomi in Taiwan, the original ‘Paper Church’ was disassembled and its materials sent there. The church was reopened in 2008 in a park in Taomi where it now forms a tourist attraction.
