Francis Kéré: African architecture should stop copying the West

hello i am francis and i am very happy to be here i am a native of burkina faso and burkina faso is a country in which more than 80 percent of the population are neither able to read nor write ladies and gentlemen in this part of the world people never heard the term of desire or architecture but things are being done due to the lack of secure income people build a house by themselves and as a model they just copy the neighboring house in this part of the world in west africa we have only one

school for architecture and it is a toggle ladies and gentlemen in this part of the world when you happen to build a wall for somebody for a family which is straight and able to stand the rainy season people are happy i suppose i don't need to explain to you how great a privilege it is for me to be standing before you today from gandu my home village in burkina faso to berlin in germany to attend architecture and to have the opportunity to speak to you is a big big step so please don't expect from me

don't expect from me a lecture about modern architecture in general or for the african countries what i'm going to do is to show you how together with the people of my home country we're just trying to build houses which are able to stand many many rainy seasons this is the capital city wagon left they call it informal right they call it formal i don't know what is formal and informal what i know is that a lot of people are coming to the capital city looking for jobs for better life and they just build a house

by themselves and they set up they have their business they do everything to survive and they're really happy but what happened is the government said this is informal so what i do is just to break everything down and try to put a structure you know the problem is we are copying the western model but we don't know the story of it and we don't own the means to make it in the proper way and that is a big problem we build houses in which you can see you need air conditioned to be able to stand

inside any country which belong to the progress in the world is a wrong solution china ladies and gentlemen has become a big example for us people just go there buy cheap merchandise and by the way that could be how chinese are building look at to the roof but this is the reality in wagadoo the country doesn't have the power to provide the infrastructure for the people when you need water you have to carry this and a thing like that but i like to bring you in the village where every brickinabe is coming from i am

from a village and the architecture look like that you can't see the structure grandpa grandma it is a big compound where everybody is living and i cannot show it because i miss a pointer you will see a little one a big big one people are there together generation for generation and they really live peaceful when when they don't look to the west when they don't look to the media when they don't follow the information saying that we are poor so you start to say oh i am poor i need somebody to help me so the

architecture is like that people just come together and start to build and at the end you have to protect the house again rain and the color is beautiful of course what happened is they're different because you finish building you go to nature and try to find the color from one tree but nature is not a fabric not a factory you can't get a lot enough color for the same compound so it's become different and what happened is after rainy season it's look like that the color disappear but at the same time the compound has grown

when i have a message to pass is please please help me to never put an african compound under you know unesco protection that means punishing the people an african compound is made to grow when there is necessity and to shrink when there is necessity and we don't care and by the way they will come and say this african they don't respect convention they just changed the color we didn't nature did it so the most building material in my part of the world is clay and we have some problem with it water is destroying it for

you and this is a typical school building in burkina faso um inside it's look like that myself i sat in a class like this with more than 160 other pupils ladies and gentlemen you can imagine the temperature inside the building like that what it is 40 degree outside this is something i'm criticizing right it is a mosque left it is another mosque the old one somebody came and just give the people a new mosque it's good i like presents but but this kind of of present is bad because it is destroying traditional knowledge you give

a concrete mosque to the people and you forgot to teach them to save that technique knowledge i cannot come on top but you know what for the woods on top people use these to make the repairs every year and giving them a mosque made by concrete you help them to destroy their own richness so it's okay okay so yes uh i get a chance to attend higher education in germany and as a student i had a dream i wanted to make it better simply better i didn't care after two years at university i said okay

i should do it because nobody will do it for me so i started with an association called schulbauerstein of uganda info what means school bricks for organo because i had the idea to build school for my people and we started to look for the money i started to make the design but there was no money everybody was sending me everywhere and then i found was forced to found this association in order to raise the money and i came home said to my people i have fifty thousand dollars let's build a school the next day i

said to my people we're going to use clay and they said to me what is wrong with francis he has lost his his brain the german guy make a brain wash to him because they always wanted to change things it is they don't want us to be innovative and we talk we talk we talk we talk and i happen to build a school completely likely with my people and i'm sure how we make it you see the school and we have a hill not that big one like in cape town but we have rocks and

then we bring it down like you can see women younger all men we put it to make the basement it helps have money what we don't have and sometimes the children are an important part of my work and please please don't put me to prison and it will be punishing my people because what we're doing is such an event and everybody want to be part of it it happened to me that the child was hurt by a stone and i had some german friend there so i have to take care of her what happened is

an ant because you bring an aunt in a village i am of course a very important person um nobody can talk to me like that but they can't go far away and bring somebody outside the society oh she doesn't care this person can talk to me and then you discover somebody come and do like this to me all the time doing like that and i was asking what what is that so and somebody took me bro wrote me out and said you know it's because of this girl you forbid forbidden you have forbidden her to

work and she's not happy the old family is not happy because this child is not able to be part of this event so that how things happen how i build plays putting me to prison because of that is punishing my people and the buildings grow like you can see with the power of the people and this is the building today it's 10 years old no maintenance it's still like the same inside this look like this no more corrugated iron but a ceiling made by clay bricks which we made ourselves and a vegetable garden it is

important it is dry so i try to put techniques that people can survive and they can adapt it really that's what i'm doing but ladies and gentlemen how to explain drawings to people who are neither able to read no road right not always the challenge i start drawing by the hand on this hand and i make very simple sketches like this and we just start to make it there is no regulation what we do is all the time to do a little model and we make it and always i am the first to spring on

top like this it's working and my staff are coming one by one to look at but what you cannot see is this part of the picture the entire village is waiting i'm looking no crash wonderful technology no crash good technology but crash forget it so these become a ceremonial in my work so you build a structure like this and half of the village want to be on top ladies and gentlemen engineering has limitations but what to do say to them not all has is allowed to come on top you cannot say that because oh friends

he said not everybody is allowed to come on top there is a risk it can break so no good technology so i am fighting trying to bring them away but i can't say to you i had always heart beating boom boom boom boom but it happened that still now no accident and it is working and this is about teacher housing project after building school in 2001 we was forced to build teacher housing because the teacher was coming from the city and they are educated people they cannot stay in a village you had to find an

attraction for them so we build this sister staff housing it is a compound so and you make a single model in a hoping that people can adapt it and you can't bring it together to a big compound it's look like that and you add ideas how to collect rainy water you can see these waste and to bring the water away from the building to save it dry season grow vegetable and eat it that's what i'm doing not more not less it's very simple inside very simple that the people can copy that what i'm doing or

adapt let me show you a very quick way how we we use primitive tools to make a complicated structure like this we trying to have a volt a big big vault and they just use water level under machete to make it and it's like that like you can see we put the roof very simple way with the people from the village and come the time to put color to protect the windows again corresion so you start talking about color to one person 10 minutes later you speak to 10 person half an hour later you speak

to half of the village one hours later you speak to all village what i'm doing is i just left and i came back and most of the time i found the building down and you start to be angry because you you you attach to use color maybe and you say man they could make it otherwise but before you start complaining somebody comes it was me that fight for this color and another one came no it's me and then the entire village started to to to say it's my building and what i've have discovered is i

just give them a frame and they play they use it they own it and really they're happy i'm building something like trees big big trees and even animals like that i really love what we do and so they just use it and they love it because it's their building it's not mine and here is a battle a teacher is sleeping and children want to play and you know those from cape town you know what happened here who's the loser and they use it like you can see every corner of the building inside i am trying

to create buildings which i call consuela de mesan que respire building breathing houses not what i'm trying and it worked really people in my home call them fritsch in gando and it's a big compliment not in europe but in in burkina faso yes of course yes and my people are really proud about that really you can't see them because it's their their project their work and when again first without education i will never be able to do that and that what people from the west have the most it is education i don't have it burkina

faso and these make the difference i'm going to show you in a very quick way i don't have a notion of time how we put how now from the beginning that was rejecting what i had as an idea but now how i am allowed to introduce traditional techniques in the building at the beginning they were saying we just want to have a concrete building because the school is something from france and it has to be made by concrete and now clay but look at what we do we're making a clay floor just to see what

we do the young men come yes like this they stand like you can see beat them and at the certain moment their mother comes and you can't see my job so i don't know how to interpret the word of indava but we came together we put everything together and sometimes i feel like a director of an officer they're full of talent and i have to direct them and i am taking care of the top of the building because of the plaster and somebody called francis has to make a photo and show this evening it is

a great even it gives you power and the women come in this position beating like you can see and giving water really picking waiting hours hours and by music you can't see it and yes of course we love music but what i have learned from my people it is music it's important it's more than music imagine we're going to have this flow very flat we don't use water level we use nothing but ravi is stronger than i am nephew is stronger than other others my colleagues from the u are differently strong and we beat everybody's

beating on his corner we're differently strong but with the music at a certain moment our beats become the same so that happened that through these techniques we become very flat classrooms like you can see and the polisher cam can make it like you can see like you can see and this is the result you can't remember it is not photoshop it is reality and look that so and so we make it and this was by the way my first contract and as an architect so that's why i i made my diploma in 2004 and people

start talking about my job and i keep on building in ghando by myself raising money i didn't care i don't only wanted to do my diploma because i had enough i had my people as a client i was just work but somebody come asking me to do a project like that for him and this is my stuff from right i cannot show to you is kabila you have always a little budget you get you go to the market you want to have from this ladder many moss material and kabila is the one in charge close

to him is baba the oldest muscle i have a greatest one and close to him is ahmed and mary is the best of the best worker you have in the world he's so great he's he's his he's welding all my roofs and we're designing tools we're making it together and in the middle is benjamin the best of the best best medicine you have he's so great he's making everyone so wonderful lovely and this is kayambu kayambo is the best of the best in the world really is the musician koyumba is the first to go to

the building site and call the people and when we have hard work he has to beat to make people get in trouble so they can work harder but in the evening we don't have electricity could you mutic take out his guitar and played for the whole village and the next day when we have guests especially from europe with the camera then he put his take out his clothes and show the muscle and can take very heavy heavy heavy stone this is koyumbo so this project was concerned to use electric stone to make a building and

we just cut it like you can see from this side to this size i see i have five minutes left so just show you in the very quick way how we make it we cut it like you can see clock clock so we lay them to a wall and we lay them to a floor we cut them and i have to leave so we make a simple sample model on our left my people stay they make it on the mango tree not in the factory really and they put it together and we put it together

we assembled them and it's amide making the final cuts and the buildings finish and people can be educated very simple so and we in this design process i cannot explain it because i don't want to bore you it is an idea of natural ventilation having opening on the top for light and the year to circulate very freely the next biggest project was a competition which i won by the way it's a park landscape project i am proud that my partner for landscaping was entering away from planning partner from cape town and this park was in

bamako in mali and we made it we just had only eight months to do it and we make it i came and there was it there was a wondering because i came and asked them to use local material that was looking like that to me what is an exotic guy what is he looking for and we we fight and fight and we manage to build something like that once again i was asking them to let us work with the people with the local people and you can see how we make it even the women was

in charge for that project you can see laying stone which has been cut to the build at the building side really and put them together and to have a structure like this and it opened in september last year and the client his highness diagram was very impressive and i hope we could get more project like that because they opened it for six for three weeks and there was more than eighty thousand visitors paid visitor in that in west africa where there is no money and it's like that so for for you cannot design or plan

something completely so some just use the building itself as a stool it is a sports center inside and they just use it and the same client just asked me why was fighting asked me last year in march if i don't want to design a museum for them and i was fighting to finish the building the biggest one i said no i am not a supermarket and then they just sent somebody who just he was uh higher in the in the hierarchy now francis just a simple drawing so it's because it's a gift and so you

start making the simple drawings ah it's wonderful make design drawings i am not a super mario i'm not able to do that somebody from the higher level came and they put you under pressure still you agree and it happened that we built a museum in less than four months it's called musee de l'architecture musee de architecture anter it is a multi and we finish it by the way the water is not like the same here um we fight how to have a building like i'm doing which will not dominate this mosque the clients start fighting

but for me it was important to introduce clay building techniques that was what i was i could do and it's it's no domination the most is still there and from the road it's very easy you have it and it works really and you know i have built a museum so the last latest really last project um the government in burkina faso met me 2008 in china i was invited by the united nations to be the expert so what happened is when african politicians myth they their country people abroad and they seem to be important they're

asking why why we didn't know him so you have to be no one in foreign before they they consider you what happened is that they asked me to to build a park i have to take part of the competition 200 hectare and they wanted to have a confidence hole like in china double big like that i couldn't say no because it's uh it's denying when you're you're the authority to call you you have to go you're a son of the country they know how to put you under pressure whatever we made a design like that

and it was looking like that beautiful like china but the problem was there was no money to build it simply we are responding to them but it's happened in our countries because i wanted the building to breathe that way they had to respect it and people was has been demonstrating because they wanted to have that building after an exhibition but no way it is in west africa you cannot move things so very last thing is it happened to you as an architect that the client can and this guy was affected by concert and he had

a dream he wanted to build an opera an african opera so and you didn't respond because who is going to finance it which art which kind of opera going to to play there we don't need a house to do it but he was affected by concert and he had a total german press on the project and always when i came with him i had something like that and two years long my life was on the camera like that what happened is i had to change his mind to make the project to something strong it become

an opera village but unfortunately he died last year in august and we still fight to keep something from it i can't say to you it's a secret we're going to build a school for art and teacher housing and a lot of that that will be good for him i think it's going to be something like that so let me go back to gando before finishing it i started everybody was laughing even even in berlin you're too young to do that you will hurt everywhere you're too young to do to do that um i remember i

don't really know your name with your harley davidson story i am impressed and i like it we have to go forward you don't know which client you will meet some met good great clan with money money is still the problem but when you have a vision a good idea you can fight for it when i started my school project i built for 120 children and now i am building a big high school in my home village because we are about 1 500. and this so that is and my people are really really proud of it

so thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you you