Interview "It was my duty to give something back to the community that raised me"
Africa The big city to come
The Pritzker Architecture Prize, the most prestigious in its field, has this year chosen Francis Keré, an architect from Burkina Faso, known for his work in West Africa,
in very precarious construction conditions
.
Keré was the author
of the Serpentine Pavilion
in London in 2017, in one of his few projects built outside his country.
Later, in 2019, he became known to the Spanish public at an exhibition at the ICO Foundation in Madrid.
Since then, his name has been a symbol in the paradigm shift of the architectural discussion: artisanal care, the decision to work and investigate from poverty, the discovery of expressive forms in natural materials... All those issues that he
makes 15 years seemed like extravagances
, they are now in the center of world attention.
A year ago, the Pritzker chose Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, known above all for a rehabilitation project with a
banlieu
obsolete in Bordeaux.
Keré's award seems consistent with that direction.
Keré also has a moving story.
He was the son of the chief of an isolated village in his country, a place called Gando.
Since he was skilled,
he received a scholarship to study carpentry in Berlin
.
As he did well, he furthered his studies and did Architecture.
And, when he graduated, he returned to his country, which in the year 2000 had a per capita income of 255 dollars.
One of the Keré schools in Burkina Fasso.EFE
Since then, Keré's work has not consisted of building enclaves of progress and modernity like those that are beginning to proliferate throughout Africa.
He, on the contrary, debuted with a school, the first of the public endowments that are in his curriculum.
And, instead of insisting on building as in Germany, he focused on the task of optimizing the region's construction materials.
He investigated even better the consistency and regularity of adobe bricks, he systematized the use of wood, he found a way to build roofs as cheap and malleable as metal sheets but that would overheat less...
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