Blue Ocean Dome + Paper Log House design by Shigeru Ban Architects, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art building
Blue Ocean Dome + Paper Log House by Shigeru Ban
July 10, 2025
Design: Shigeru Ban Architects
Location: San Francisco, Northern California, USA / Maldives, Indian Ocean, South Asia
Shigeru Ban-designed structures set to receive renewed purpose
Ban often notes, “If a building is loved, it becomes permanent.”
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art adds a Paper Log House to their Architecture + Design collection and Blue Ocean Dome will be reused as part of a resort in the Maldives after the 2025 Osaka World Expo.
The Paper Log House at The Glass House photos © Michael Biondo
Blue Ocean Dome photos © Hiroyuki Hirai
Paper Log House + Blue Ocean Dome designs by Shigeru Ban Architects
NEW YORK CITY (July 8, 2025) — Today, Shigeru Ban Architects (SBA) announced the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) has added the Paper Log House exhibited at The Glass House last year to its permanent Architecture + Design (A+D) collection. Originally issued as part of a broader acquisitions announcement, SFMoMA is the first museum to acquire a Paper Log House by the Pritzker Prize–winning architect.
The excitement for and reuse of Shigeru Ban’s temporary designs also extends to Blue Ocean Dome, an innovative three-dome structure that will find renewed purpose after the 2025 Osaka World Expo in Japan closes later this year.
The Paper Log House acquired by SFMoMA comes from Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House, an installation that was on view between April and December 2024 as part of The Glass House’s 75th anniversary season and the highly anticipated reopening of the Brick House. Fabricated and installed by students at The Cooper Union and SBA’s team in New York City, exhibiting Shigeru Ban’s Paper Log House offered a unique opportunity to reflect on the permanence of architecture. It also showed how disparate building materials, namely glass, brick and paper offer unexpected possibilities.
Born out of his desire to not make waste, the architect’s experiments with paper tubes began in 1985. A decade later, he created the Paper Log House in response to the need for temporary housing after the Kobe earthquake. The structure uses easily found local materials for the foundation and roof.
For 30 years, Shigeru Ban and his Voluntary Architects’ Network have iterated versions of the Paper Log architecture for shelter, which have been deployed quickly in places of natural and humanitarian disaster. His pioneering use of paper tube construction, elevating the humble material through installations, buildings, and disaster relief projects, earned him the Pritzker Prize in 2014.
In 2024, as part of receiving the Praemium Imperiale in Architecture, the Japan Art Association’s annual global arts prize commented, “Ban has fulfilled his mission as an architect in times of peace as well as in times of emergency.”
From paper tubes to mass timber, current global works include HOUSE by Shigeru Ban Architects in Miami; a cross-laminated timber expansion for Ukraine’s largest hospital in Lviv; a distillery in Scotland; and a resort in the Maldives that blends in with the sea and green nature in an “infinite” manner.
The latter, which utilizes pre-fabrication methods and applies lightweight and recycled materials, will also receive and reuse Shigeru Ban’s Blue Ocean Dome designed and built for the 2025 Osaka World Expo. Promoting ocean conservation and sustainability, the innovative structure which closes in October 2025 comprises three domes constructed using bamboo, carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP), and of course, paper tubes.
SBA’s New York office also recently designed a house in Utah and has ongoing post-fire efforts in Hawaii and California.
The collection and reuse of Shigeru Ban’s temporary structures underscores the idea that permanence in architecture is not defined by material durability, but rather, by intentional stewardship of the built environment. With sustainability and human need in mind, this approach challenges conventional building lifecycles and offers a compelling model for contemporary practice.
As Ban often notes, “If a building is loved, it becomes permanent.”
Images:
The Paper Log House at The Glass House acquired by SFMoMA © Michael Biondo
Blue Ocean Dome at the 2025 Osaka World Expo © Hiroyuki Hirai
Blue Ocean Dome + Paper Log House design by Shigeru Ban Architects images / information received 100725
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