Notably, Ban is the first non-U.S. architect to win the AIA Gold Medal since 2019 when it was presented to the late Richard Rogers. He is also the first Japanese architect to be named an AIA Gold Medalist since Fumihiko Maki in 2011. The AIA Gold Medal is the latest international accolade that Ban can add to his already impressive trophy chest. In 2014, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize and more recently received Japan’s Praemium Imperiale for Architecture (2024). Just this year, he was named a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.

RECORD has visited and covered numerous projects by Ban and his firm over the years, including high-profile commissions for clients such as Swatch, Centre Pompidou, the Aspen Art Museum, and Japan’s Simose Art Museum as well as his disaster relief work such as his Cardboard Cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, and a modular privacy partition system for emergency shelters in Poland accommodating Ukrainian refugees. The project in Christchurch, a permanent structure erected with recycled cardboard tubes following a catastrophic 2011 earthquake “demonstrates how inexpensive, recyclable materials can create elegant and resilient structures” per the AIA. In 1995, following Japan’s Kobe earthquake, Ban established the Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN), a nonprofit arm of SBA that provides international disaster relief to conflict-torn and natural disaster–scarred locales. To date, VAN has completed over 50 projects in 23 countries. A major effort to emerge from VAN is the Paper Log House, an adaptable and low-cost emergency housing solution that in 2024 was erected on the grounds of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, as part of an exhibition of VAN/SBA’s global humanitarian efforts.

A prolific educator, Ban has taught at numerous stateside universities such as Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia, where he “empowers students through hands-on building, often involving them in VAN projects, and demonstrating that architecture can be a powerful form of service,” the AIA writes.

As the latest Gold Medalist, Ban will be honored in June at the 2026 AIA Conference for Architecture & Design in San Diego. There, he will be joined by the just-announced 2026 AIA Architecture Firm Award winner, Jackson, Mississippi-based Duvall Decker.

While the Gold Medal recognizes individuals, the Architecture Firm Award celebrates practices that “have consistently produced distinguished architecture” for at least a decade. Founded in 1998 by Roy Decker and Anne Marie Duvall Decker (a 2023 Women in Architecture honoree), Duvall Decker has “established a powerful model for how architects can serve communities, particularly those with limited resources, by creating spaces that foster dignity, equity, and public good,” writes the AIA in its announcement, adding that the firm has “built a practice that redefines what it means to be an engaged architect. Their work is a testament to the idea that thoughtful design can be a catalyst for revitalization and empowerment in overlooked communities.”

Projects by Duvall Decker to appear in RECORD include the Springdale Municipal Complex in Northwest Arkansas and Mississippi’s Badour Center. The firm, which also provides services in real estate, project management, and building maintenance, has also worked extensively with Jackson’s public school system and local HBCUs. The newly completed U.S. Courthouse in Greenville, Mississippi, is Duvall Decker’s first project for the General Services Administration.