Pritzker Prize Goes to Architect From West Africa (Published 2022)
- ️Tue Mar 15 2022
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Using indigenous materials and local symbols, Francis Kéré makes buildings that serve the community he came from.
March 15, 2022
Growing up in a poor village in Burkina Faso, Francis Kéré didn’t play soccer with the other boys. He helped fix houses.
After winning a scholarship to a vocational school for carpentry in Germany and attending architecture school at the Technical University of Berlin, Kéré didn’t rush to join a prestigious firm. As an architecture student, he had raised the money to build an elementary school in his hometown, Gando, with construction help from local residents, drawing blueprints for them in the sand.
And even after earning international acclaim at exhibitions like the Serpentine Pavilion in London and the Venice Biennale, Kéré has continually directed his attention toward home.
It is this devotion to lifting up the community he came from that has helped Kéré, 56, earn the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor, which was announced on Tuesday.
“His buildings, for and with communities, are directly of those communities — in their making, their materials, their programs and their unique characters,” the jury said in its citation. “They are tied to the ground on which they sit and to the people who sit within them. They have presence without pretense and an impact shaped by grace.”
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