Diébédo Francis Kéré

Diébédo Francis Kéré, born 1965 in Gando, is a Burkinabé architect.

Life

As the son of the village headman, he could go to school in Tenkodogo. From 1978 he worked as a carpenter.^[1] 1985 he worked as an instructor for Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, the German ministry for development aid. In 1990, a scholarship from the Carl Duisberg Society allowed him to go to school in Germany, finishing with Abitur in 1995, and to study architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, graduating in 2004.^[2] In 2006 he was made knight of the National Order of Merit in Burkina Faso.

Work

In September 1998, he founded the organization Schulbausteine für Gando (Building blocks for Gando schools). Since 2001 his projects included the erection of numerous schools in Burkina Faso. He devised a building technique based on traditional methods of loam construction, extended with modern structural principles. His buildings rely principally on local materials and a construction process based on manual labour.^[3] He devises the buildings in a way that they can cope with heat and rain.

His ideas were presented in the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt and the Expo 2008. In Jemen he designed school building prototypes to fit the different climate regions of that country. His Gando school won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004.^[4]

Kéré works as a lecturer at his alma mater, teaching how to design buildings ecological and socially adequate to their environment. He has contributed to architectural books and magazines. With Christoph Schlingensief he is working on a project in Laongo. They started off with the idea of building an opera house. After the 2009 floods, they extended the project to focus on showing the villagers how to build houses. The house is to include rooms suitable for education.^[5]

Prizes

• Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2004)
• Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009)^[6]
• BSI Swiss architectural Award (2010)^[7]
• Marcus prize for architecture 2011 ^[8]

External links

• Kéré Architecture, official site
• Schulbausteine für Gando organization homepage
• Festspielhaus Afrika, site for the festival opera house project
• Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) talk 2010 'Step by Step: Sustainable Buildings in Africa', Francis Kere(video)

References

1. ^ Global Award for Sustainable Architecture: Diébédo Francis Kéré
2. ^ Diébédo Francis Kéré - Global Award for Sustainable Architecture
3. ^ Zumtobel Award Honourable Mentioned Project, 2007
4. ^ Architecture and Polyphony: Building the Islamic World Today. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture, The Ninth Award Cycle. Thames and Hudson, 2004. ISBN 978-0500285336
5. ^ "Von Afrika lernen, was wir nicht mehr können", ZDF Aspekte, January 22, 2010.
6. ^ Global Award for Sustainable Architecture: Diébédo Francis Kéré
7. ^ [1]
8. ^ [2]

Persondata
Name	Kere, Diebedo Francis
Alternative names	kéré, diébédo francis
Short description
Date of birth	1965
Place of birth	Gando, Burkina Faso
Date of death
Place of death