The highest award in international architecture is the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, also known as the Nobel Prize in the genre. This year, it was taken over by the African-born, German-based artist, Dipedo Francis Kerry.
Debidu Francis Kerry was seven years old when he left his village at the request of his father as the eldest son of the village chief. Gantou was a village living in the center of the country without electricity, river water and without a school, 180 kilometers from the capital, Ouagadougou. Born in 1965, Keri first went to a county capital to read and write—and was the first in her community to attend school. He later went to Germany on a scholarship – where he did not study carpentry according to the call for proposals (there are very few trees in his half-desert country) but became an architect at the Technical University of Berlin. Already there, he had a school assignment to design an elementary school in his native village, where the lessons of creaking under the tin roof of the cast building were not difficult to remember. He knew that he could only make moderate and at the same time economical buildings in Central Africa from completely different materials and with completely different architecture. To do this, he chose mud bricks, which he then reinforced with cement to withstand the rare but stormy rains and a double-floating roof system that ventilates naturally, i.e. helps warm air to escape and cooler to infiltrate. He dimmed the hot African sun with the help of colored shading strips, but directed his light into classrooms depending on the hours of the day.
Born in Faso, Burkina, he is also an architect, educator and social activist, differently envisioning the building process himself. It was built not only by locals, but also by locals, who handcrafted every part of the school from brickwork to walls and compacting the clay floor, on the architect’s instructions, blending ancient materials with modern engineering techniques. But Keri also tailored funding to special circumstances: She donated children’s access to a comfortable classroom.
He is the first African and black architect to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize in its 43-year history. The Third World, due to its various circumstances, traditions, and poverty, has been a major player in international architecture for over a decade, and its efforts have intensified since the climate crisis at the Venice Biennale, for example. In 2018, an Indian architect (Balkrishna Doshi) received the award for his creative use of community architecture, but the aspect of “strengthening and transforming communities through the architecture process” was once again critical.
Thus the dual citizenship of Burkina Faso and Germany became known through the design of schools and health facilities in Africa, while also revitalizing local communities by building with minimal resources. Less than 15 years after the establishment of the adobe school in Gando, he received a real representative job: he designed the new parliamentary bloc for his country, for example. (He designed a stepped pyramid-shaped building with a conference room for 127 seats – due to the volatile political situation.) The publication, however, also has significant work in Germany, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. “Francis Keri’s work fully demonstrates the power of locally rooted materialism,” said Alejandro Aravena, the 2016 Pritzker Jury Prize-winning Chilean president, who is best known for his architecture to help people break out of poverty.
The International Prize was established by the Pritzker family in Chicago in 1979 through the Hyatt Foundation and is awarded each year to a living architect for outstanding performance. It is often referred to as the Nobel Prize in Architecture – in any case, the award consists of $100,000 and a bronze medal. And of course an international reputation is growing in an unprecedented way in the news wing.
“Even if you are poor, you have to strive for quality.” Everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves convenience. ‘ said Frances Kerry when he received the award.
