Diébédo Francis Kéré received the renowned Pritzker Prize for architecture. He was born in Burkina Faso in 1965 and came to Berlin to study in 1985, where he has had an office since the 1990s. As the first architect from Africa on the very white and very male list of now 44 award winners, Kéré is the lonely individual responsible for the fact that the juries have apparently forgotten to take this continent into account so far.
On the phone, Kéré explains how grateful he is and why he sees the award as recognition of the struggle and hardship involved in realizing his projects. That fills him with pride: “I’m from Africa, I feel connected to the continent, I started my work there. So I am pleased that Francis Kéré has now been hit.”
And with a laugh he adds: “Actually, I’m the only living German Pritzker Prize winner.” In addition to Burkinabe, Kéré has German citizenship. Before him, the Pritzker Prize was awarded to star architects such as the Dutchman Rem Koolhaas, the Swiss Peter Zumthor, the Iraqi-born Briton Zaha Hadid and most recently the French Lacaton & Vassal, but so far only Gottfried Böhm (1986) and Frei Otto (2015) from Germany , posthumously).
Operndorf in Burkina Faso (Rendering)
What: Kéré Architecture
In Germany, Kéré is associated with the opera village that the director and performance artist Christoph Schlingensief initiated near Ouagadougou shortly before his death in 2010. The focal point is a festival hall surrounded by artists’ studios, a health center and a school. He learned a lot from Schlingensief, who pushed the project through to the end despite his serious illness, says Kéré:
“His courage was also encouraging for me. He had the vision and he didn’t care what others thought about it.” Schlingensief also inspired him to stage his work. “Architecture can really use some dramaturgy.” The opera village is an example of what Kéré stands for: social building.
His buildings create community, starting with the elementary school in his Burkinabe home village of Gando. This is already evident in the process of their creation. Kéré started crowdfunding, created local jobs, had craftsmen trained to produce clay bricks that have an air-conditioning effect.
Elementary school in Gando, Burkina Faso
Quelle: Erik-Jan Owerkerk
“It was born out of necessity. When I started there were neither people who could read architectural plans nor real masons in Gando. So we trained people in all the necessary techniques.” Kéré wanted to create architecture that puts people first.
The sustainably designed buildings always formulate their aesthetics from their function and their common purpose. A clinic in Léo, Burkina Faso, is composed of modules that also form the outdoor space.
A high school in Koudougou is laid out in a ring around a courtyard and can be gradually expanded to form a campus. Clay plaster and brick, eucalyptus wood, but also corrugated iron are the material vocabulary that Kéré repeatedly falls back on.
Medical settlement in Léo, Burkina Faso
What: Francis Kéré
Kéré was honored by the Pritzker jury, whose president is the Chilean prizewinner from 2016 and pioneer of socially engaged architecture Alejandro Aravena – foresightedly also for two projects that have not progressed beyond the design stage or are still in the implementation planning:
Kéré has designed new parliament buildings for the capitals of Benin and Burkina Faso. The House of the National Assembly in Ouagadougou was stormed and set on fire in 2014 after demonstrations against President Blaise Compaoré’s further term in office.
“I was asked to design a new parliament building, you can’t refuse that,” says Kéré. “But I wanted to come up with a provocation and show what constructions Africa was once capable of.” So he designed a pyramid whose steps should be accessible so that it can be used by the public.
Draft for the National Assembly in Burkina Faso
What: Kéré Architecture
“I was surprised that the plan was received so positively.” But it never came to fruition. The elites are divided, the country is being torn apart by terrorism, says Kéré. A military coup took place in the West African country in 2015, and another a few weeks ago.
But Kéré’s vision of “creating ideas for democratic forms” has been heard in Benin. His building, which will house the National Assembly in the capital, Porto-Novo, is now under construction. But Kéré also wanted to provoke there when he presented a design in the form of a so-called palaver tree.
In earlier times, the village communities would gather under the broad umbrella of the baobab tree to discuss or hold court: “Today in Africa one often thinks that it is old-fashioned to refer to tradition.”
Under construction: Kérés Parliament building for Benin
Quelle: courtesy of Kéré Architecture
That’s primitive, they say, says Kéré. “But that is exactly what they wanted in Benin. They felt the design honored their past and wasn’t old-fashioned at all, but fresh and modern.”
How do you organize and design the structural symbols of democracy, which these days can be understood as an endangered utopia? The answers that Francis Kéré gives will hopefully get more than just regional attention.