Japanese architect Shigeru Ban - who uses cardboard tubes to make temporary housing in disaster zones - has won 2014's Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Architect Shigeru Ban in Christchurch in December 2012. Photo: AFP (file)
Ban, 56, whose work also includes the cardboard cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, said it was "a great honour" to win the Pritzker, architecture's top prize.
"I see this prize as encouragement for me to keep doing what I am doing - not to change what I am doing, but to grow," he said.
The BBC reports Ban has designed a range of buildings to help people in disaster zones, including Japan, Rwanda, India, Sri Lanka, Haiti and Italy.
His work began in in 1994, in response to the Rwandan genocide. He is currently in the Philippines.
''Shigeru has made our world a better place," said Tom Pritzker, head of The Hyatt Foundation which awards the prize.
The prize and a grant of $US100,000 will be presented at a ceremony in Amsterdam in June.
Ban is a professor at Kyoto University of Art and Design, who teaches at architecture schools around the world.
An exterior view of the Cardboard cathedral in Christchurch designed by Shigeru Ban. Photo: AFP / Stephen Goodenough / Shigeru Ban Architects