May 12, 2022 21organization was founded in 1949 and
specialized in outreach programs for
young people from developing nations,
part of the country’s postwar effort to
make amends for its recent past. (It was
named after a chemist and industrial-
ist who was CEO of the pharmaceutical
giant Bayer, which during the Weimar
Republic merged with several other
firms to become IG Farben. Duisberg
died in 1935, after which Farben be-
came infamous for its production of
Zyklon B, a gas used in the Nazi exter-
mination camps during the Holocaust.)
Kéré’s vocational training in Germany
inspired him to remain there after its
reunification and study architecture,
which he saw as the best way he could
serve the people of his homeland.
In 1995 he won a scholarship to the
Technical University in Berlin. In a
2020 interview with the online maga-
zine Pin- Up, Kéré recalled, “When you
study in Berlin, you will face the great
Mies van der Rohe” (whose most con-
spicuous work in the German capital,
his Neue Nationalgalerie of 1961–1968,
reopened last August after a six- year
renovation by the British architect
David Chipperfield). “I really like the
art of rationalism he applied—so ef-
ficient, so simple, very clear to under-
stand.” Another formative influence
was Louis Kahn, whose work in the
Third World, especially his Indian In-
stitute of Management of 1962–1974 in
Ahmedabad, Kéré visited and found to
be “an eyeopener. Kahn’s adaptation
to the place, the use of brick, the sim-
plicity—but then the complexity, at the
same time.”
Although late- phase Mies schemes
such as the Neue Nationalgalerie—asteel- girdered, glass- walled Minimalist
box perched atop a broader travertine
podium—might seem the antithesis of
the humble, environmentally respon-
sive architecture Kéré aimed to cre-
ate in Burkina Faso, that old master’s
emphasis on structural integrity and
elimination of the unnecessary spoke
directly to him. During the 1920s, even
as Mies envisioned structures unprec-
edented in their extensive use of plate
glass, he also created a remarkable
series of houses in Germany that de-
ployed brick in such a modern way that
decades later Kéré understood its ap-
plicability to Burkina Faso, where he
would use locally fabricated brick, as-
sembled with a Miesian attention to ex-
acting detail and clean craftsmanship,
to make his breakthrough works.During his architectural studies
in Berlin, Kéré started a charitable
foundation called Schulbausteine für
Gando (school- building blocks for
Gando) to raise money for a school of
his own design in his home village. He
has said:Good architecture in Burkina
Faso is a classroom where you
can sit, have light that is filtered,
entering the way that you want to
use it, across a blackboard or on a
desk. How can we take away the
heat coming from the sun, but use
the light to our benefit? Creating
climate conditions to give basic
comfort allows for true teaching,
learning and excitement. I consid-
ered my work a private task, a duty
to this community.In his plans for the Gando Primary
School, Kéré specified low- tech com-
ponents and fabrication methods that
would allow untrained locals to be en-
listed in its construction. However, he
saw no reason not to aim for an innova-
tive design unlike anything its builders
had ever seen before. For example, the
single- story structure’s outer walls are
made of hybrid bricks he devised with
a small percentage of concrete added
to the usual clay for extra durability. To
increase indoor air circulation in that
hot, arid climate, he lifted the curving
roof up above the walls on a dense net-
work of angled supports made from
common rebar—the steel reinforce-
ment bars embedded in poured con-
crete to give it more strength—which
Gando residents were taught to weld
into the required angular groupings.
The school served as Kéré’s diploma
project at the Technical University
and led to commissions for other edu-
cational institutions in Burkina Faso,
including two extensions, a library,
and teachers’ housing for the Gando
Primary School; the Dano Secondary
School of 2006 –2007; and the Lycée
Schorge Secondary School of 2014–
2016 in Koudougou. The latter is a
beautifully proportioned composition
of nine tall minimalist modules topped
by ventilating towers clad in a local red
stone and conjoined in a horseshoe ar-
rangement around an inner courtyard,
with the outer perimeter of the group-
ing wrapped in a tall, semitransparent
screen of slightly angled eucalyptus
rods.
The Lycée Schorge’s configuration of
small individual pavilions enclosing a
central plaza works well in West Africa,where a semi- enclosed open- air space
with peripheries shaded from the re-
lentless sunlight can provide a sense of
protection desirable for social welfare
facilities in a part of the world where
too few of them exist. Kéré went on to
use similar layouts for two projects in
the Burkinabé town of Léo: the Surgi-
cal Clinic and Health Center of 2014
and the Léo Doctors’ Housing of 2019,
which added on- site residences for the
medical staff. The ensemble is among
Kéré’s strongest compositions—an arc
of cubic, self- contained dwelling units
made from a double wall of concrete
block and compressed- earth blocks
(CEB) that increase thermal mass to
keep the interiors cool. The modules
were given a coating of tinted plaster
to stabilize the CEB, in a color much
like the iron- rich red earth of the sur-
rounding terrain, which makes the
architecture seem more like a natural
emanation of the landscape rather than
a man- made imposition.
Other African countries have picked
up on Kéré’s feel for place and appro-
priateness, and his built works else-
where on the continent have been
excellent without exception. These in-
clude a visitors’ center for the National
Park of Mali in Bamako, completed in
2010; the Benga Riverside School of
2017–2018 in Tete, Mozambique; and,
most recently, the Startup Lions Cam-
pus of 2019–2021 in Turkana County,
Kenya. His sole completed commis-
sion in the US to date is his Xylem of
2019, an intriguingly conceived and
crafted shelter at the Tippet Rise Art
Center in Fishtail, Montana, a privately
sponsored cultural venue that features
a number of outdoor sculptures andThe arc and continued
ascent of contemporary
artist Beverly McIver.BOLD NEW ART BOOKS
The social and cultural
roots—and global
importance—of iconic
Filipino American artist
and educator Carlos Villa’s
artwork and career.When Diego Rivera
helped forge Mexican
national identity in visual
terms and imagined a
shared American future.“Returns to the topic
of art’s relationship to
capitalism in the 1960s
to uncover things most
scholars have preferred to
ignore.”
—Joshua Shannon,
author of The Recording
MachineFiller 20 22 .indd 21 4 / 13 / 22 4 : 12 PM