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World’s Top Architect of 2022
Architecture’s Top Prize in 2022 Goes to Architect From West Africa
Growing up in a poor village in Burkina Faso, Francis Kéré didn’t play soccer with the other boys. He helped fix houses.
After winning a scholarship to a vocational school for carpentry in Germany and attending architecture school at the Technical University of Berlin, Kéré didn’t rush to join a prestigious firm. As an architecture student, he had raised the money to build an elementary school in his hometown, Gando, with construction help from local residents, drawing blueprints for them in the sand.
And even after earning international acclaim at exhibitions like the Serpentine Pavilion in London and the Venice Biennale, Kéré has continually directed his attention toward home.
It is this devotion to lifting up the community he came from that has helped Kéré, 56, earn the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor.
That work has taken the form of schools, libraries, health care centers and public spaces — often in underserved areas where Kéré makes the most of limited resources and draws on West African traditions. His projects have been concentrated in Africa, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo, Kenya, Mozambique and Sudan.
Kéré enlisted the cooling effects of quarry stone and stacked towers to minimize the air-conditioning needs of Startup Lions Campus in Turkana, Kenya, an information and communication technologies complex completed in 2021.
Mechanical/Solar Engineer Prof. Oku Singer
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