The cathedral made of cardboard tubes, so beloved by Shigeru Ban, was built in the second largest city of New Zealand, Christchurch, which survived a devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake three years ago: it almost completely razed its historic center to the ground. In particular, the cathedral was destroyed: its bell tower collapsed, other parts of the building were also damaged, and in March 2012 the city administration decided that it was impossible to restore the complex. Instead, the project was accepted for implementation of a temporary religious building - a cardboard cathedral, proposed by Ban. Initially, it was about a 15-year service life of this object, and now, when the cathedral has already opened for parishioners, the city authorities say that it will be used for about 50 years, during which the parish will be able to build a new stone church.
The main building material for the 24-meter-high cathedral is 98 pressed cardboard pipes with a diameter of just over 60 centimeters (24 inches), from which the architect folds a high gable roof. Thanks to the latter, the building acquired an expressive A-shaped silhouette, making the new cathedral a noticeable landmark in the city's panorama.
To give the pipes more strength, "rods" from a bar are used, and the ridge of the roof is assembled from steel elements. On the outside of the roof, on top of the pipes, sheets of milky polycarbonate are superimposed, letting in soft diffused light inside the cathedral, and cargo containers act as load-bearing walls, the use of which not only made the installation of the structure simple and quick, but also made it possible to optimize the internal layout of the cathedral.
Most of the furniture and utensils for the cathedral were made by Shigeru Ban also from cardboard pipes. And its main decoration, undoubtedly, was the triangular stained-glass window placed above the entrance to the cathedral to the full height of the roof. It is made up of triangular sections of colored glass, each of which bears fragments of drawings familiar to parishioners from the windows of the destroyed church.
The cardboard cathedral, which can accommodate up to 700 people, became the first new building in Christchurch after the earthquake and a symbol of the city's rebirth after the natural disaster.
