Francis Kéré, materiality and place

In 2022, Francis Kéré was awarded architecture’s highest international accolade, the Pritzker Prize. Kéré’s many projects show us the power of materiality rooted in place, which is something that we emphasise through the use of local materials in our architecture and design work.

Against the odds

Kéré was born in a remote village in Burkina Faso, with no electricity, running water or a local school. He left his family at age seven to study at a city school, where he later trained as a carpenter. After receiving a scholarship for an apprenticeship in Germany, he went on to study architecture in Berlin. Despite being far from home, one of his first projects was to design a school for the village he grew up in, in collaboration with members of the community and using local materials. For this, he was awarded the Aga Khan Award in 2004 and the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2009.

Innovative use of local materials

The Burkina Faso school project included the use of clay-earth bricks and suspended, corrugated metal roofs, to encourage stack ventilation for students learning in a hot, arid climate. By placing the overhanging metal roofs like this – rather than in the common way that makes houses hot inside – cool air is drawn in through the building’s windows and hot air is then released through holes in the ceiling. The innovative use of local materials and adaptation of traditional building techniques, combined with insight and involvement from the community, have been central to Kéré’s renowned approach.

Impact and investment

As awareness of his work grew, Kéré received widespread recognition for his experimentation with different materials to create cool and comfortable buildings in the hot African climate. He has also managed to raise funds for several projects focused on improving schools and other educational buildings for Africa’s young people, often involving buildings’ users in its construction, as he did in his home village.

Continuing to experiment with natural alternatives to air conditioning, one of his most recent projects – a technology campus in Kenya – uses wind towers shaped like termite mounds. In another project – a secondary school in Burkina Faso – he used local, laterite stone as the main building material. By orienting the building east to west, the amount of direct solar radiation on the walls was reduced, and a sharply protruding metal roof (like that used in the school in his home village) creates a large amount of shade.

Other projects in Africa have used a modular approach, with local people employed in the construction of modules, using local materials such as clay, laterite, cement bricks, gum wood and loam. Once again, large walls and impressive overhanging roofs remove the need for air conditioning in most buildings – a vital outcome in the changing climate and in communities without electricity for air conditioning, or the means with which to pay for powering cooling systems.

Inspiration

As the first black architect to win the Pritzker Prize in its 43-year history, Kéré acknowledges that he hopes to inspire young people in Africa to realise that paths like the one he has taken are open to them too. He continues to draw inspiration from local environments and there is a sense that his most impressive works may be yet to come.