Houses Built With Paper; How Long It Last?

Shigeru Ban, in Paris

It has been over a year and a half since Japanese architect Shigeru Ban won architecture's highest award. Now, the 58-year-old's body of work poses a peculiar question: how long can paper houses last?

Ban's signature humanitarian buildings -- constructed using cardboard tubing, designed and built fast in response to natural catastrophes, and often not intended for indefinite use -- have continually outlasted their period of need.

"Temporary" paper log houses, constructed in response to earthquakes in Turkey and Haiti, were
inhabited for months and years, even after rebuilding efforts began providing for more permanent residences.

In Chengdu, China, an elementary school built as a stop-gap after a 2008 earthquake is still in daily use. And his cardboard church in Kobe, Japan, built for the city's Catholic community in the aftermath of a 1995 earthquake, was shipped to Taiwan in 2008, where it still stands.

Ban's Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand is a temporary replacement, but built to 130% of the current earthquake standard.

But since he received the 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize -- inducting him into a prestigious elite that includes the names Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Gehry and Norman Foster -- Ban says he's noticed new interest in his work. (A new edition of Ban's Complete Works has recently been published.)

Offers have recently flooded in from commercial property developers to design luxury complexes. His interiors at New York's Cast Iron House have shown his capabilities on a grander budget, with apartments on sale last year for between $5 million and $12 million.

In London, Ban's commissioned design for millionaire property entrepreneur John Curran, in the shadow of Tower Bridge, will likely become the capital's most impressive timber home, if planning approval is granted later this year.