[research]
Francis Kéré:
Buildings to Teach and Learn From
2020
essay published in Select Magazine #47
photos courtesy of Kéré Architecture
Francis Kéré
Photo: Lars Borges
Born in Burkina Faso and educated in Germany, Diébédo Francis Kéré produces a unique architecture. A result of two contrasting cultures, his creations make use, at the same time, of the rationality of his education and of his origins in an African community. Curiously, this mixture also reflects upon his personal appearance: elegant cut shirts harmonically cohabitating with the discreet tribal scars on his face.
Over 3 thousand kilometers separate Berlin, where Kéré lives and works, from Gando, the village where he was born and also his main construction site. In the German capital, his studio occupies a building located next to Tempelhofer Feld, a former airport now turned into a park. Between architects and collaborators from the Kéré Foundation - responsible for managing and fundraising the projects he carries out in Gando - other 16 people work with him. His home village is located about 180 kilometers into dirt roads in Uagadugu, Burkina's capital. With about 2,5 thousand inhabitants, Gando has no electricity, suffers from a drinking water shortage and, about 20 years ago, was also the portrait of the country's fragile educational system: with no schools, its population was practically entirely illiterate.
The situation would change from 2001 onwards, when the village’s first school was inaugurated. With a little over 200 square meters of built area, it was conceived by Keré when he was still an architecture student at the Technical University of Berlin. The project gained prominence from 2004 on, when it won the prestigious Aga Khan Award - dedicated to projects carried out in countries with a significant presence of Muslims - which is Burkina Faso’s case. The small school, which initially housed 150 children, was the seed to a set of buildings which now attend to around 700 students.
Inaugurated almost 20 years ago, the Primary School of Gando was a milestone in Francis Kéré’s career. As a professor at architecture schools, he provokes his students: "Ask yourself if what you're proposing is something you would like to have your name attached to in a few years, and make sure you're comfortable inviting a whole neighborhood to use what you have created and bring it to life".
Under constant development, Gando’s educational complex has become Kéré’s business card, which is being more and more requested. With orders around many African countries, in Europe and the United States, his focus is on designing public buildings: schools, health centers, art installations and governmental headquarters. He also acts as a professor: he teaches at the Technical University of Munich and has been through Harvard and Yale. On top of that, he is often invited to participate in exhibits and congresses, such as the UIA 2021 RIO, the 27th World Congress of Architects, to be held next year at Rio de Janeiro and at which Kéré will be one of the main speakers.
The educational complex in Gando currently serves around 700 students. Among Kéré's plans is to establish in the village an architecture research and training center, "to test ideas and educate a new generation of architects and related professionals". In the photo, students in activity at the Primary School.
Photo: Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk
Community construction
Why so much interest in his figure? Besides his social engagements, the architect's personal history also counts. In summary, in search of basic education, Kéré leaves his home village while still a child. The boy would not return to live in Gando - a scholarship would take him to Germany for technical training in carpentry, which would be followed by the Architecture course. The precarious school structure of his childhood would leave such deep marks that it would mold his professional mission: in his words, “to construct buildings good for teaching and for learning”.
Prototyping is part of the architect's work routine. The practice has its origins in the first constructions he carried out in Gando, when he himself led the process. According to Kéré, his strategy had a goal: "how to explain architecture to a community that cannot read or write?" In the photo, a test carried out on a patch from the roofing on the Primary School extension project, inaugurated in 2008.
Photo: Keré Architecture
But his overcoming obstacles story, as powerful as it may be, would not be sufficient to gather awards, invitations to teach at prestigious schools or to create architectural icons such as the Serpentine Pavilion, a project carried out in 2017 and that inserted him most definitely into the star system. Kéré is also, of course, an excellent architect.
A large tree from Gando was the main reference for his Serpentine Pavilion project, inaugurated in London in 2017. According to Kéré, "in Burkina Faso, the shadow of trees are public spaces par excellence, even in larger cities". Conceived as a living space, the pavilion was composed of a large rooftop, supported by a central pillar and surrounded by a curved wall made of stacked wooden planks. The graphic effects generated by the arrangement of the roof clapboards and the wall planks are reminiscent of African textile patterns. In the treatment of the wood, a shade of indigo blue was used, the color of celebration in Kéré's native culture: "I wanted to show my building in its best color".
Photo: Iwan Baan
You needn’t go far to understand: the simple design of the primary school of Gando already demonstrates the intelligence of his work. Constructed with simple materials, the building has three rooms interspersed with open corridors, all covered by a single roof. The walls, floors and ceilings of the rooms were made of clay taken from the land itself. For the roof, curved metal tiles were used, which rest on a light structure built with rebar – metal bars that are usually “hidden” inside concrete structures. The wide roof flaps protect the building from intense rain and sun. Combined with openings in the room’s ceilings, large metal shutters guarantee permanent natural ventilation of the spaces. For a region where the temperature can reach up to 45ºC, it is quite an achievement.
The construction process is also an important part of Kéré's practice. “I'm not a big fan of finished buildings,” he jokes. In the Primary School case, the low budget forced him to create construction solutions that would make the execution feasible. One of them was relying on volunteer work from the community. “Funding was limited and its realization needed all hands on deck,” he comments. Hence, he designed the building in a way so that construction could be carried out by inexperienced labor, but still guaranteeing a result with the desired formal and technical quality.
Involving the communities in the buildings constructions would become his trademark. He and his team use it both as a strategy to encourage appropriation of the building by its future users and as a professional training platform. Currently, Kéré has a local support team in Burkina Faso. Between technicians and builders there are about 25 professionals, many of them trained in their work. The practice ended up creating a professional network that goes beyond his projects. Kéré celebrates: “What more could you want for your work than to capacitate countless others?”
Located in Koudougou, the third most populous city in Burkina Faso, the Lycée Schorge Secondary School is a larger and more elaborate version of Gando’s Primary School. Inaugurated in 2016, its approximately 1,600 m² of built area contains familiar elements: walls built with local soil, metal shutters, spatial trusses and a curved roof. But there are also innovations: its implementation creates a central courtyard used for student recreation and community events; benches attached to the outer face of the windows provide resting areas; made of raw eucalyptus logs, a hollow closure of the external front protects the walls from the sun and provides a delicate light effect. In the photo, students have lunch on this porch.
Photo: Andrea Maretto
Technical precision, spatial quality, inventiveness and social responsibility – here is a summary of Kéré's work. Luiz Fernández-Galiano, curator of the Elementos Primarios exhibit, held in 2018 in Madrid regarding the work of the architect, spares no praise: “Francis Kéré is not only the most important architect in Africa, but also the one who managed to reconcile, in his work, ethics and aesthetics”.
In time: Diébédo, in his native language, means “the one who came to organize things”. Indeed, in Kéré's buildings, little seems to be out of place.