Diébédo Francis Kéré Wins the Prestigious 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize

WORDS Cheri Morris IMAGES Erik-Jan Owerkerk, Iwan Baan, Diébédo Francis Kéré via pritzkerprize.com

Architect, educator and social activist Diébédo Francis Kéré is the first African to win the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Born in Gando, Burkina Faso and based in Berlin, Germany, Diébédo Francis Kéré has been recognised for the ways in which he empowers and transforms communities through the process of architecture.

“Francis Kéré is pioneering architecture – sustainable to the earth and its inhabitants – in lands of extreme scarcity. He is equally architect and servant, improving upon the lives and experiences of countless citizens in a region of the world that is at times forgotten,” comments the Pritzker jury. “Through buildings that demonstrate beauty, modesty, boldness and invention, and by the integrity of his architecture and geste, Kéré gracefully upholds the mission of this Prize.”

One of his earliest projects, Gando Primary School in Burkino Faso, established the foundation for his architectural ideology – to build with and for a community in order to fulfil an essential need and redeem social inequities. Locals offered their input, labour and resources from conception to completion, crafting nearly every part of the school by hand, guided by the architect’s inventive forms of indigenous materials and modern engineering. The success of Gando Primary School awarded him the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, and was the catalyst for establishing his practice, Kéré Architecture, in Berlin, Germany in 2005.

He has completed numerous schools and health centres across Africa, including the Republic of Benin, Burkino Faso, Mali, Togo, Kenya, Mozambique, Togo and Sudan. His work has yielded exponential results, not only by providing academic education for children and medical treatment, but by instilling occupational opportunities and abiding vocational skills for adults, therefore serving and stabilising the future of entire communities.

“I considered my work a private task, a duty to this community. But every person can take the time to go and investigate from things that are existing. We have to fight to create the quality that we need to improve people’s lives,” says the architect.

Kéré’s designs are laced with symbolism and his projects outside of Africa are influenced by his upbringing and experiences in Gando. The West African tradition of communing under a sacred tree to exchange ideas, narrate stories, celebrate and assemble is recurrent throughout his body of work.

The Pritzker Architecture Prize is considered architecture’s most significant lifetime achievement award.

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