22 The New York Reviewstructures by artists such as Alexander
Calder and Mark di Suvero.
Kéré’s contribution is a freestand-
ing circular gazebo made from pine
logs harvested from surrounding for-
ests in a “natural pruning” to promote
the health of the remaining trees. The
structure’s name refers to the pattern
created by its roof, which is sixty feet in
diameter and assembled from slices of
pine log that when viewed from above
recall xylems, the circular bundles of
vascular tissue that conduct water up-
ward through the stems of growing
plants. There is a fitting symmetry in
Kéré having fulfilled this commission,
because the construction of his Naaba
Belem Goumma Secondary School
in Gando, begun in 2011, is being un-
derwritten by the Tippet Rise Fund of
the Sydney F. Frank Foundation, es-
tablished by the art center’s founders,
Peter and Cathy Frank Halstead.3.
Because most of Kéré’s completed
buildings are far from the well- trodden
pathways of mass tourism, few peo-
ple have seen them apart from their
users, local residents, or architecture
aficionados who’ve traveled great dis-
tances expressly to visit them. Hap-
pily, among the latter is Iwan Baan,
the Dutch architectural photographer
who is renowned for his uncanny abil-
ity to capture a building’s setting with
extraordinary fidelity while at the same
time making pictures that are fully
descriptive of its materials, massing,
and details. His incisive depictions of
Kéré’s work are among the best wehave, and the exceptional affinity the
two artists share led to their collabora-
tion on Momentum of Light, a poetic
visual essay on the traditional architec-
ture of Burkina Faso and, by extension,
the influence it has exerted on the artis-
tic development of its foremost contem-
porary master builder. Baan’s highly
atmospheric pictures of the country’s
hand- formed mud structures, some
of which are painted or incised with
powerful graphic patterns, convey an
almost palpable impression of his pres-
ence on the scene, as do Kéré’s reminis-
cences of the effect such structures had
on defining his own architecture:The quality of light lies in the in-
terplay of dark and bright. Having
only one or the other means losing
some of the intricate beauty their
communion can provide, making
space and the experience within
as rich as can be. Never yield the
power of light solely to a switch.In the immediate aftermath of the
Third World’s emergence from colo-
nial rule during the second half of the
twentieth century, several recently in-
dependent nations turned to Western
architects to design new governmental
centers, most famously Le Corbusier’s
new state capital of Chandigarh for the
Indian state of Punjab (1951–1964) and
Louis Kahn’s Sher- e- Bangla Nagar,
the national capitol building in Dhaka,
Bangladesh (1962–1983). In due course
it became more common for native-
born architects to get the commissions
for such defining expressions of liber-
ated nationhood, as exemplified by Sri
Lanka’s New Parliament Complex inKotte (1979–1982) by Geoffrey Bawa,
and Charles Correa’s Vidhan Bha-
van, the Madhya Pradesh legislative
assembly building in Bhopal, India
(1980 –1996). Both those schemes draw
on regional forms quite different from
Le Corbusier’s and Kahn’s more sculp-
turally abstract Modernist approaches
at Chandigarh and Dhaka, which none-
theless rank among their designers’ fin-
est late works.
Kéré has gotten two such governmen-
tal commissions thus far. In 2015 he was
asked to design a new National Assem-
bly building for Burkina Faso’s capital
city Ouagadougou to replace the one
that was burned down a year earlier
during an uprising that ousted Blaise
Compaoré, the country’s chief of state
for nearly three decades, who wanted
to make himself president for life.^1 The
architect’s unconventional project re-
flects his determination to “think of
how to design a [new parliament build-
ing] that responds to Burkina Faso and
the needs of the people.”
To avoid making it seem like an un-
approachable seat of power, he devised
a six- story, ziggurat- like structure with
gently gradated and intermittently
landscaped slopes that will allow its
exterior to be used in much the same
way as Snøhetta’s Norwegian National
Opera and Ballet of 2002–2008 in Oslo,
one of the most popular public spaces
created in postmillennial Europe.
The success of Snøhetta’s scheme de-
rives largely from the sloping roof that
melds into the plazas that surround the
building and serves as a veritable grand-
stand where locals and tourists delight
in seeing and being seen. Whether or
not climatic conditions will allow Kéré’s
equivalent in Ouagadougou to be used
in quite the same way remains to be
seen—its realization has been delayed.
But the public access that the fore-
most Burkinabé architect builds into
his country’s new parliament building
could not speak more distinctly of the
democratic and participatory values he
hopes his architecture will foster there.
Farther along is his Benin National
Assembly of 2019–2023 in Porto- Novo,
the capital city of the country formerly
called Dahomey, just to the south of
Burkina Faso. Kéré’s scheme was in-
spired by the West African tradition of
the palaver tree—normally some huge,
broadly canopied tree such as a baobab,
in the cooling shade of which tribal rep-
resentatives would meet to discuss issues
of mutual importance. “Palaver,” which
is related to the Portuguese palavra
(word), in American usage means “idle
jabber” and in British has a more pejora-
tive sense of bothersome complications.
But in the eighteenth century it denoted
negotiations between indigenous people
and traders, and in Africa today it sig-
nifies parliamentary cooperation.
This 376,000- square- foot building
is sited in a public park planted with
Benin’s native flora and evokes the
protective profile of a gigantic baobab.
A four- story, square, flat- roofed office
superstructure is lifted on thin periph-
eral columns and shades a deep wrap-
around arcade centered with a hollow
concrete “tree trunk” surrounded by
upwardly flaring supports, all of which
reinforce the arboreal imagery without
descending into mimetic kitsch. On the
ground floor is the parliament’s assem-bly hall, a lofty ovoid space of admira-
ble simplicity, with curved structural
beams that also vaguely suggest shel-
tering tree branches. The chamber’s
pale earth tones and lack of showy na-
tionalistic iconography convey both im-
mense dignity and calm self- assurance.In 2010, I was asked by Va ni t y Fa ir mag-
azine’s editor, Graydon Carter, to partic-
ipate in a poll of architectural experts to
determine “the most important piece of
architecture since 1980.” I immediately
regarded this as a tiresome journalistic
stunt that would reduce a serious issue
to a cartoonish popularity contest. Fur-
thermore, mindful of the unanimous
critical acclaim that greeted Frank Geh-
ry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in
Spain when it opened in 1997 and cat-
apulted its architect to dizzying heights
of international fame, the survey’s result
seemed as preordained as that of a presi-
dential election in Putin’s Russia.
Nonetheless, I responded with a letter
naming Kéré’s Gando Primary School.
I explained that “important” can have
a wide variety of meanings, but that in
my opinion establishing the first school
in a desperately poor Third World vil-
lage, and with a superlative example of
innovative sustainable building design
at that, seemed a far more important
accomplishment than almost anything
else I could think of in contemporary
architecture. Needless to say, Gehry
swept the Va ni t y Fa ir competition, with
twenty- eight of the fifty- two ballots cast
for his Spanish masterpiece. (Renzo Pi-
ano’s High Tech–Minimalist Menil Col-
lection in Houston came in second, with
ten votes.) I was the sole participant to
cite Kéré, which I felt was likely regarded
by the magazine staff as a write- in pro-
test. In fact, a tally of all the respondents
listed my choice as “(none).”
Since 2017, Kéré has served as chair
of architecture at Munich’s Technical
University, though his professional of-
fice remains in Berlin. (The TU Archi-
tecture Museum’s excellent 2016–2017
exhibition of the first fifteen years of his
building career was accompanied by
an equally fine catalog, Francis Kéré:
Radically Simple.^2 ) He holds dual cit-
izenship in Germany and Burkina Faso
and divides his time as much as pos-
sible between his native and adoptive
countries, while also having accepted
several of the visiting professorships at
prestigious schools—in his case Har-
vard, Yale, and Germany’s Bauhaus
University in Weimar—that come as
further proof of rising stardom on the
international architectural scene.
But his emotional and moral attach-
ment to his humble roots remains strong,
and although one has seen other gifted
architects morph from self- effacing as-
pirants into egomaniacal divas, it seems
to me improbable that his head will be
turned by the tidal wave of adulation
that the Pritzker Prize inevitably un-
leashes. How judiciously he picks and
chooses among the many offers that
will now come his way—including such
typical Pritzker- winner bait as condos
in New York’s Chelsea and Miami’s
Brickell districts, boutiques for LV M H
luxury brands, and wineries for tech
billionaires—will indicate how well
Francis Kéré can handle the double-
edged sword that is architectural fame
in our money- worshiping, celebrity-
besotted modern world. Q‘Love’ is a word we hear a lot at
Vitsœ. Other verbs just don’t seem to
cut it. Like in this heartfelt message
from Melvin in Sydney, Australia to
his personal Vitsœ planner Sophie in
London, England.As with any customer, Sophie ensured
that every detail was considered so
that Melvin’s shelving was perfect for
his needs.Like everybody at Vitsœ, she’s
passionate about good service, and
communicates with all her customersdirectly, wherever they are in the world.
Whether in-person, or on the other side
of the globe, our planners hold your
hand throughout the whole process.Time and again we prove that long-
distance relationships really do work.
Be it planning your first system, moving
it to a new home or adding an extra
shelf, every single interaction is handled
with love, from Vitsœ...Design Dieter Rams
Founded 1959
vitsoe.com“We love love love our Vitsœ system.
The build quality and easiness of
assembly is amazing, but it was
your service that made the whole
process such a joy.”Photo by
Melvin T(^1) See Howard French, “Enemies of
Progress,” The New York Review, Oc-
tober 7, 2021.^2 Hatje Cantz, 2016.
Filler 20 22 .indd 22 4 / 13 / 22 4 : 12 PM