For the Mediterranean issue of Kinfolk, YAA Projects spoke to Francis Kéré. Speaking from Berlin, where his practice is based, the conversation reflects on nearly two decades of work, since the completion of his first building, a primary school in his hometown of Gando, Burkina Faso. The discussion traces a practice grounded in making, culture and community.
Beginning with childhood memories of a compound house in Gando, spaces animated by storytelling and gathering, Kéré describes architecture as both atmospheric and practical: evocative in its capacity to hold collective life, and rigorous in its response to climate and labour. The conversation moves from small-scale community projects to civic architecture, including projects like Benin’s National Assembly, which broke ground in spring 2021, and reinterprets precolonial forms of gathering as symbols of democratic futures. Resisting reductive notions of a singular African architecture, Kéré positions architecture as a practice to be understood in context: responsive to climate, craft and people.
Read In the studio: Diébédo Francis Kéré here.