Shigeru Ban, in parallel with his ongoing commitment to creating safe spaces for people in need, is collecting donations to help earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria. So, together with Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN), Shigeru Ban Architects, began providing Paper Partition System (PPS) evacuation centers to deal with the damage of the earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on February 20.

PPS is a simple partition system to ensure privacy for inhabitants of evacuation centres, and has already been used several times in Japanese areas affected by natural disasters, such as the Great East Japan Earthquake, with subsequent tsunami that hit the coasts of Honshu Island in 2011; the Kumamoto earthquake in 2016; the Hokkaido earthquake in 2018; and the torrential rains that hit the south of Kyushu Island in 2020.

Shigeru Ban Architects has also developed solutions for the civilians escaping the war in Ukraine, installing PPS in 16 different locations in France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine.