Developer Phillip Bay asked Shigeru Ban to design a prototype house that could be built cheaply using local materials and would be suitable for the tropical climate. The house was to form a template for the construction of 100 replacement homes in Kirinda.

"This was not going to be a traditional disaster relief effort where we go in and make homes really fast and leave," said Bay. "I wanted to treat this like a development project."

Ban's design comprises a single-storey structure with walls made from compressed earth blocks and a pitched roof made from locally sourced teak and coconut wood.

Each house has two bedrooms, a hall and a sheltered courtyard, which residents can use as a dining room, social space or simply as a place to repair fishing nets.

Adaptable wooden screens divide the rooms, to suit a Muslim lifestyle. "This is the first time I've worked for the Muslim societies," said Ban, "so before I built the houses I had a community meeting to find out what has to be carefully done depending on the generation, for example, we had to separate the man's space and woman's space."

Ban also designed furniture for the residence, using wood from the rubber trees that are common to the region.

The Post-Tsunami Housing was completed in 2007 but was recently named as one of 20 projects on the shortlist for the Aga Khan Award 2013. Other projects on the shortlist include an Islamic cemetery in Austria and a reconstructed refugee camp in Lebanon. Five or six finalists will be revealed later this year and will compete to win the $1 million prize.

Shigeru Ban has also worked on a number of other disaster-relief projects. He devised apartment blocks made from shipping containers for victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011 and was one of several high-profile architects involved in the Make It Right housing project in New Orleans. See more architecture by Shigeru Ban.

Photography is by Dominic Samsoni.

Here's a project description from the Aga Khan Award organisers:

Post-Tsunami Housing

This project provides 100 houses in a Muslim fishing village, in the region of Tissamaharama, on the southeast coast of Sri Lanka, following the destruction caused by the 2004 tsunami. Shigeru Ban's aim was to adapt the houses to their climate, to use local labour and materials to bring profit to the region, and to respond to the villagers' own requirements through direct consultation. For example, kitchens and bathrooms are included within each house, as requested by the villagers, but a central covered area separates them from the living accommodation, as stipulated by the government. The covered area also provides an entertainment space from which women can retreat to maintain privacy. Local rubber-tree wood was used for partitions and fittings, and compressed earth blocks for walls.

Location: Kirinda, Sri Lanka (Asia)
Architect: Shigeru Ban Architects, Tokyo, Japan
Client: Philip Bay
Completed: 2007
Design: 2005
Site size: 71 m2 for each house - Total site area: 3'195 m²

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The Paper Pavilion, which was inaugurated yesterday, is constructed in the university's Serrano garden and will serve as a multi-purpose space for events, meetings, talks and exhibitions.

The project had a restricted budget, so Shigeru Ban designed a system of cardboard roof trusses and columns which were cheap to install and can be easily recycled when the building is eventually dismantled.

The tubes were manufactured and waterproofed locally in Spain and were assembled by members of the surrounding community.

The IE School commissioned the pavilion, supported by the Japan Foundation. The opening event was a lecture by Ban entitled "Appropriate Architecture".

Tokyo architect Shigeru Ban has used cardboard to construct a number of pavilions and structures in recent years, which ties closely to his work on disaster relief projects. He is currently working on a cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has also built a pavilion with cardboard columns in Moscow and a temporary tower made of paper tubes.

See more architecture by Shigeru Ban on Dezeen or see more design with cardboard.

Photography is by Fernando Guerra.

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Organised by Kenya Hara, the creative director of MUJI, Architecture for Dogs is set to launch next week as an open-source network where dog-owners can download the templates for each of the thirteen designs, then build them for themselves.

Each designer was asked to think up a structure that would alter the way that people interact with their pet, so Atelier Bow-Wow have designed a ramp for a daschund (above) that helps it make eye contact with its owner, in spite of its short legs. "We thought about stairs, but their bodies are too long and they risk hurting their hips," said the architects, explaining their design for a folding slope.

Meanwhile, Konstantin Grcic has designed a mirror for a poodle (above), as apparently it is the only dog that can recognise its own reflection.

Shigeru Ban has used his trademark cardboard tubes to create a maze for a papillon (above), while Sou Fujimoto has recreated the scaffolding-like structure of his House NA project in Tokyo in his house for a Boston terrier (below).

Sanaa's Kayuzo Sajima came up with a design for a fluffy white cushion (below) that matches the fur of the bichon frisé.

"Bichons love soft surfaces and snuggling into large blankets," said Sajima. "The typical space designed for dogs in the interior of a house is at the convenience of the human and is frequently a cage-like container you keep in the dark corner of a room. This design however is a warm, inviting version of that crate."

Kengo Kuma has devised a system of wooden components (above) that can be used to construct a hill, which a pug can either sit inside or climb up onto.

MVRDV wanted to "give the curious and playful Beagle a space of its own" and have created a gabled kennel (above) that rocks back and forth.

For a spitz, Hiroshi Naito has created a curving bed of tubes and wooden blocks (above), while Toyo Ito's design is a four-wheeled mobile home for a shiba (below).

As chihuahuas are known to love burrowing, Reiser + Umemoto thought the best structure for one would be a comfortable outfit (below). "We wanted to create something that would make the dog feel protected and safe," said the architects.

Other structures include a reimagined hammock by Torafu (below), a staircase in a box by curator Kenya Hara and an upside-down suspended cone by the Hara Design Institute.

The Architecture for Dogs website is set to launch on 15 November, when people will be encouraged to upload photographs of the structures they've built and share any improvements they've made.

The structures will also be presented in December as part of Design Miami.

Other designs for dogs on Dezeen include a special staircase at a house in Vietnam and a combined chair and kennel.

See more stories about animals »
See more stories about open-source design »

Photography is by Hiroshi Yoda.

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Garage will occupy the pavilion during the entire construction period, which will see a 1960s building in Stalinist-era Gorky Park renovated into an exhibition centre with moving walls and floors.

Ban's oval-shaped pavilion is located in the same park and has chunky cardboard columns surrounding its entire perimeter.

"The construction of the temporary pavilion is both efficient to construct and affordable by using local materials produced in St. Petersburg," said Shigeru Ban.

Discussing his decision to work on the project, Ban explained: "I was interested in working in Russia first and foremost because of Russia’s culture, architecture, music and art and due to its geographic connections with Japan. Although Russia and Japan are neighbours, we have very different cultures."

A single rectangular exhibition space is contained inside the building, alongside a bookshop and cafe.

In late 2013 Garage will relocate to their new building and the pavilion will then be used for experimental projects.

The inaugural exhibition, entitled Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban, focusses on the history of temporary pavilions in the park, which was planned in the 1920's by Konstantin Melnikov.

Find out more about OMA's design for the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in our earlier story, or hear about it in our interview with Rem Koolhaas.

Shigeru Ban has created a few structures using cardboard, including a temporary tower and a tea house.

See all our stories about Shigeru Ban »

Here's some more information about the exhibition:

Garage Center for Contemporary Culture will present a new exhibition entitled Temporary Structures in Gorky Park: From Melnikov to Ban from 20 October to 9 December 2012 in a newly created temporary pavilion in Moscow’s Gorky Park, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. Showing rare archival drawings –many of which have never been seen before – the exhibition will begin by revealing the profound history of structures created in the park since the site was first developed in 1923, before moving through the Russian avant-garde period to finish with some of the most interesting contemporary unrealized designs created by Russian architects today.

By their nature, temporary structures erected for a specific event or happening have always encouraged indulgent experimentation, and sometimes this has resulted in ground-breaking progressive design. This exhibition recognizes such experimentation and positions the pavilion or temporary structure as an architectural typology that oscillates between art object and architectural prototype. In Russia, these structures or pavilions – often constructed of insubstantial materials – allowed Soviet architects the ability to express the aspirations of the revolution. They frequently became vehicles for new architectural and political ideas, and they were extremely influential within Russian architectural history.

This exhibition reveals the rich history of realized and unrealized temporary structures within Moscow’s Gorky Park and demonstrates important stylistic advancements within Russian architecture. Temporary Structures also reveals the evolution of a uniquely Russian ‘identity’ within architecture and the international context, which has developed since the 1920s and continues today.

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Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has completed a New York store for footwear brand Camper where all the shoes are hidden away.

The shoes are revealed to customers as they enter the shop, contained in cubbyhole shelves behind the 2.5 metre-high letters that spell out the name of the brand on a sawtoothed back wall.

Furniture from the architect's 10 Unit System create seating rows that copy the 45 degree angles of the zigzagging back wall and a red-striped concrete floor follows suit.

The cash register rests on a a desk covered in fake grass at the back of the store, while a framework of cardboard tubes gives the building a gabled roof.

Although Ban was the designer of the store, the project was delivered alongside New York architect Dean Maltz.

A list of high-profile architects and designers such as Doshi Levien and Jaime Hayón have designed stores for Camper. See more of them here.

Here's some more details from the project team:

House of Shoes

The Existing Building has been gutted to make way for a 1,200 SF Retail Space on the Ground Floor with 1,200 SF of Basement Storage below. Atop the flat roof is Shigeru Ban's signature Paper Tube Structure in the form of a triangle. The new gable shape celebrates Camper's first Owner occupied building in New York, thus becoming Camper's "House of Shoes".

Billboard Display

Seen from the corner of Prince and Greene Streets, one first sees a Red Wall with White Letters boldly displaying the Camper name. It isn't until one enters the store that one sees a disintegration of the letters and discovers the shoe display revealed in cubbies arranged in a 45-degree angle in plan behind the Red Wall. The 45-degree angle is echoed in a polished concrete floor with epoxy red stripes and a corrugated metal ceiling that is red on one side and white on the other. At the far end of the space is a mirror that simultaneously allows one to see a reflection of the white-sided elements of both the shoe display and the ceiling that is in sharp contracts to the red, when seen from the front.

Furnishings

In the space is a white seating area/shoe display made up of from elements of the Shigeru Ban' 10-Unit-System, manufactured by Artek and black floor stand light fixtures, called Yumi by FontanaArte.

Street Life

The original non-historic pseudo-traditional façade was altered by removing the existing bulkheads under each window and was replaced with sliding glass doors enabling multiple entry points to the store. When the doors are slid open the building becomes a completely connected to the street, enlivening the street and acting like a covered bazaar. This feature to open to the street energizes the Soho district in a manner similar to the outdoor bazaar that exists at Spring and Wooster Streets

Green

At the far end of the store is moss covered cash wrap, with green colored shoe display behind. This hint of color emphasizes a sense of nature and makes reference to the outside world further blurring the distinction between inside and outside.

Design Ingenuity- Sliding Doors

To completely open the store to the street, stackable sliding doors were employed. Shigeru Ban Architects worked directly with the manufacture build on and innovate with existing manufacturer technology to provide a weather tight seals to meet current energy code requirements.

Project: Camper Store in Soho
Site: 110 Prince Street at the Corner of Green Street
Credit: Shigeru Ban Architects + Dean Maltz Architect
Design Architect: Shigeru Ban Architects
- Design Partner - Shigeru Ban
- Managing Partner -Dean Maltz
- Director of Projects - Nina Freedman
- Architect - Ji Young Kim
Executive Architect: Dean Maltz Architect
- Principal - Dean Maltz
Engineers: Robert Silman Associates - Structure
- Partner - Nat Oppenheimer
Icor Associates LLC - Mechanical
-Partner - Igor Beinstock
Contractor: Michilli Construction and+ Consulting
- President - Angelo

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