Architecture’s most prestigious award, the Pritzker, has gone to Shigeru Ban. He won, not for soaring designs and folded and warped angles like some of his contemporaries (yeah, Gehry, I’m looking at you), but for designing cost effective disaster shelters:

On Monday, the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban was named the winner of this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize, largely because of his work designing shelters after natural disasters in places like Rwanda, Turkey, India, China, Haiti and Japan.

“His buildings provide shelter, community centers and spiritual places for those who have suffered tremendous loss and destruction,” the jury said in its citation. “When tragedy strikes, he is often there from the beginning.”

In a telephone interview from Paris, Mr. Ban, 56, said he was honored to have won, not because the Pritzker would raise his profile but because it affirms the humanitarian emphasis of his work. “I’m trying to understand the meaning of this encouragement,” he said of the prize. “It’s not the award for achievement. I have not made a great achievement.”

Kudos. Natural disasters happen all the time and all over the world. Some parts of the world are more capable of handling the disasters and tending to the needs of displaced persons, but even there, Ban has found ways to make temporary housing and related structures affordable, handsome, and workable.