Diébédo Francis Kéré was born in 1965 in Gando, Burkina Faso, and studied at the Technical University of Berlin. In 2005 he founded Kéré Architecture in Berlin. His architectural practice has been recognized nationally and internationally with awards including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2004) for his first building, a primary school in Gando, Burkina Faso. Kéré has undertaken projects in varied countries including Burkina Faso, Mali, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. He also taught at internationally renowned schools such as the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Switzerland) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (USA). Kéré continues to reinvest knowledge back into Burkina Faso and other sites across four different continents. He has developed innovative construction strategies that combine traditional building techniques and materials with modern engineering methods. Kéré’s work has recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Architecture Museum in Munich and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (both in 2016) and his work has been selected for group exhibitions such as: Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement,at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010) and Sensing Spaces, at the Royal Academy, London (2014).
Photo Credit: Erik-Jan Ouwerkerk