On Saturday, June 14, Sotheby’s will auction the Artek Paviliondesigned by architect Shigeru Ban, as part of its semiannual Important20th Century Design sale in New York. The 1,991-square-foot portablebuilding is being sold on behalf of Artek’s major owner, the Swedishinvestment firm Proventus, which plans to donate the proceeds to artsand culture charities. “What if Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilionhad been saved? We are proud to be offering a masterwork that will bestudied in future classes of 21st-century architecture,” says JamesZematis, senior vice president and head of Sotheby’s 20th CenturyDesign Department. The auction house estimates that the winning bid mayexceed $1 million.

The Finnish furniture company Artek was founded in 1935 by AlvarAalto and three colleagues, and the company has an established historyof commissioning pavilions. Ban’s temporary structure was created forMilan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile that took place in April 2007.After the fair, the building was dismantled and reassembled first inHelsinki and then at Design Miami in Florida. Instead of shipping thepavilion back to Helsinki the company decided to sell it throughSotheby’s.

Ban’s simple, pitched-roof structure is modeled after the Atelierfor a Glass Artist he completed in 2006. The Artek Pavilion uses justtwo shapes for ease of assembly: Decking forms the floor, and angledchannels are bolted together to create structural trusses andoverlapping roof tiles that form the exterior enclosure. “I loveAalto’s furniture. It is nice to have this connection,“ Ban says.

Just as the architect launched his now-famous paper tubeconstruction technique with the design of an Aalto exhibit held inTokyo in 1986, this latest Artek assignment is made entirely of a newmaterial composed of recycled plastic and paper. The product of theFinnish paper company UPM, it was developed to reduce waste generatedby the manufacture of self-adhesive labels and originally intended forgolf tees. Bigger aspirations inspired the fabrication of threearchitectural shapes, tubes, decking and L-shaped channels, and thenthe collaboration with Artek. Now Ban is working with Artek on a lineof outdoor furniture made of the recycled composite.