Shigeru Ban's first major building in New York City lasted only four months. The Nomadic Museum is a, well, nomadic museum, one that can be easily taken apart and rebuilt in different places. The walls on the building are created from stacked and staggered shipping containers, with paper tube columns and a fabric ceiling- the building and its contents are easily assembled and desassembled and then shipped in the same shipping containers that make up the walls.

Once inside the effect is wonderful. In New York the museum was built on an abandoned pier on the Hudson River. The sheer length of the building created a great hypostyle hall, the floor consisted of a central boardwalk surrounded by crushed stones, while dramatically lit photographs were suspended from wires on either side of that central path. The Nomadic Museum was designed to contain a specific exhibition, Ashes and Snow by photographer Gregory Colbert.

After startting in Venice Italy in 2002, The Nomadic Museum was in New York from March through early June 2005 and is scheduled for Santa Monica, California in January 2006.