Francis Kéré’s projects have their foundations in Africa – Edwin Heathcote

It took more than forty years, but in the end the Pritzker prize, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for architecture, was awarded to an architect from Africa. It is the first time since 1979, the year this recognition was established. The choice of Francis Kéré also shows how far the Pritzker prize has come from its beginnings: the first to receive it was Philip Johnson, an architect with a fascist past, loyal to large companies, who once said of himself: “I’m a prostitute”. But the world has changed and the architecture establishment has also turned his attention to places where this discipline can make a difference.

The story of Francis Kéré is surprising. He was born in 1965 in Gando, a small town in Burkina Faso. The eldest son of the village chief, at the age of seven he was sent to study in a nearby town. He was the first of his community to go there. As he sat in concrete-walled, stuffy, dark and poorly ventilated classrooms, he swore to himself that when he grew up he would build better schools. He became a carpenter and got a scholarship to study in Germany, where he began building roofs, and then continued his architectural studies in Berlin. With his new acquaintances he returned to Burkina Faso, where he dedicated himself to the construction of those public infrastructures that were missing in the villages: play areas, community buildings and, of course, schools. Today he got the most important recognition in his field than him.

Kéré is a fascinating person, at least as much as her past is. Its success shows how the biggest problems in the world today – from climate change to resource scarcity, from energy use to the commons – most strongly affect those people who live outside the big cities of the north of the world, where often the architectural discourse boils down to academic debates and mundane considerations.

Throughout her career, Kéré has alternated teaching at universities such as Harvard, Yale and Monaco with supervising public projects in Burkina Faso, Uganda, Mozambique and Mali. He also designed high-profile installations, such as the temporary pavilion of the Serpentine gallery in London in 2017. These works helped him gain visibility and raise the profile of the projects he followed in more remote places.

One in particular made him famous: in 2001 he built the school he had dreamed of in Gando. A long and elegant building, with barrel vaults, made of clay and concrete bricks, with the roof raised above the walls to allow for better air circulation. There is also a shaded play area and a space for outdoor lessons. Built using very simple materials and techniques, the school was designed to be built by local builders and to be easy to maintain thanks to standard and inexpensive components. In 2004 the building won the Aga Khan prize (awarded to works made in Islamic countries or of Islamic origin) and has been praised all over the world.

In the following years, after the creation of the Kéré foundation, the architect dedicated himself to building an entire infrastructure of public spaces and services in the village, where both running water and electricity were missing. He has created accommodation for the teachers, a library with a perforated ceiling that casts an extraordinary shadow on the floor, a garden, a well, a meeting place and even a secondary school. His studio has specialized in the design of schools, which adapt perfectly to their material and cultural context, innovative buildings, which do not deteriorate immediately and are easy to maintain.

Among his later works, there are landscape interventions, such as the Center de l’architecture en terre in Mopti and the Bamako National Park, both in Mali. Outside the Burkinabé capital, Ouagadougou is building an “Opera village”, as in the film Fitzcarraldo, designed to house an opera house. He developed the idea together with German director Christoph Schlingensief (who died in 2010) after a series of severe floods near the city.

Recently, Kéré has dedicated himself to large representative buildings, in particular that of the Benin National Assembly (whose shape resembles that of the tree, the traditional meeting and debate place in African villages) and that of the National Assembly of Burkina Faso, similar to a mountain. The two ambitious structures, which arise in large and open public spaces, are still in the planning phase.

Kéré is a modest and down-to-earth person, a realist who looks to local knowledge, materials and traditions rather than a codified language of personal expression. He is fluent in five languages ​​and has traces of the scarifications received as a boy on his face. He is at the same time rooted in Burkinabé and global culture, and has shown how much difference even the simplest structures can make, if designed with care.

There is, and rightly so, a certain embarrassment when it comes to “architecture in Africa”, an expression that seems to ignore the differences between Algiers and Accra. At the same time it must be recognized that this rapidly growing continent is beginning to assert itself in Western art and architecture. Unfortunately, many successful African architects like Kéré have had to establish their studios in Europe, but perhaps from there they can exert an even more global influence.

In a 2017 interview I asked Kéré if he was optimistic about the future of architecture in Africa. He replied: “People are aware of how architecture can make a difference. It’s a way to become visible ”. The award he has won will make him, deservedly, much more visible.

(Translation by Giusy Muzzopappa)