At some stage his view changed, however, and he re-assessed his roots, reaching a new understanding of both the weaknesses and the strengths of his continent. Thanks to the entire village’s participation in the construction process, people were later able to apply the learned techniques to their own houses and in further building projects.The example of this elementary school has inspired two neighboring villages to build their own school with the help of their village’s community. ファンクション It empowers the local people to build these buildings themselves; it is socially and ecologically responsible. “There are certainly convergences,” he says, but people are still trying to make the African continent into a second Europe. Kéré calls this “allowing an idea to take shape slowly, based on its effect”. Which is why others apart from architects must also be involved. He spoke with the people of his village about the technical possibilities and what the buildings needed to do; he improved the basic material, clay, by adding cement to it; he trained the local people so that they could develop and assemble the building and the necessary materials themselves and created a form of architecture which is still educational in every sense of the word to this day. To avoid such a situation, the roof of the Primary School was pulled away from the interior and a perforated clay ceiling with ample ventilation was introduced.
It is the way he involves people, the way Kéré the architect allows his works to speak for themselves – the way he listens, coordinates, picks up ideas and enables something new to emerge from long and intensive discussions; the way he forges a fruitful correspondence between his European technical knowledge and expertise and the local materials and cultures.Does he see himself as a bridge-builder, a mediator between two worlds? The three classrooms are separated by protected buffer zones, used as outdoors spaces that the children can use to study and play.Although the plans for the Primary School were drawn by Francis Kéré, the success of the project can be attributed to the close involvement of the local community. コンサルティング内容 Yet he warns against turning this sustainable architecture into a short-term trend. I’m not someone who is introduced with an interpreter, who comes with a big car and commands respect. For them the idea of harnessing European knowledge in order to modernize African huts seemed simplistic and architecturally undemanding.Yet Kéré was not to be deterred. 80 to 100 children used to be in a small classroom that burned their fingers when they touched the ceiling. Kéré was commissioned by the theatre director Christoph Schlingensief, who died recently, to turn his idea of creating an opera village in Burkina Faso into a reality. “Can an architect sit alone in his office and design and build a building which affects us all?” he asks – and then supplies his own answer: “Architecture is a very significant intervention in the environment. Who will help him and us with the work in the fields now?” To the astonishment of his village, Kéré went not just to school but even further than this: After completing his school studies he won a scholarship to study architecture in Germany. Schlingensief was already very ill when he approached Kéré with this project, asking him to support it as an architect and as a cultural mediator.
In order to do so, low-tech and sustainable techniques were developed and improved so that the Gando inhabitants could participate in the process. He has one of those names that people have heard but aren’t quite sure where. The old elementary school building was made out of hollow cement blocks with a low corrugated metal ceiling inside of which the room temperature rises astronomically. And it shows Europeans what they can learn from Africa. There’s a lot of mystery surrounding Diebédo Francis Kéré. In fact he’s the 2004 Aga Khan Award-winning architect from Burkina Faso, a contributor to the Royal Academy’s 2014 Sensing Spaces exhibition – and the architect of this year’s Serpentine Pavilion in …
WHEN FRANCIS KÉRÉ became one of the first from his village to go to school, many people thought the chief’s son would be lost to the village forever. Can a continent adopt European models of democracy and party systems from one day to the next – models which only took shape in Europe over the course of many centuries?A genuine interchange, he emphasizes again and again, means that both sides are able to present and contribute their own culture. Kéré’s Berlin-based practice is involved in projects in India, China, Europe, Yemen – and, of course, Africa. And so he joined in “the chorus of sweeping judgments about the primitive nature of African countries” and was convinced that it was necessary to export European achievements to Africa. Its The school project is currently on show in New York’s Museum of Modern Art as part of the Small Scale, Big Change exhibition devoted to innovative architecture as a form of social engagement in developing countries.
They said to themselves: “The chief is sending his oldest son to school. Kéré still remembers how after just a few weeks in Germany he was so enthusiastic about his European experiences that he began to undervalue his African culture. Anyone who wants to work successfully with people in Africa must know two things, says Kéré: They must not awaken false hopes and they must be ready to learn from them. Kéré sees architecture as duty-bound to take account of the major problems we face – global warming, poverty, environmental disasters – and to offer solutions.