Diebedo Francis Kere

Diebedo Francis Kere is a Burkinabe German architect, born in 1965 in Gando, Burkina Faso, who has lived in Berlin since 1985 and founded his practice, Kere Architecture, in 2005. He combines European architectural training with traditional African building methods, emphasizing community participation and locally sourced materials such as earth and clay to create sustainable, collaborative works. Notable projects include the Gando Primary School of 2001 and its later secondary school with passive ventilation, the Centre for Earth Architecture in Mopti, Mali, the Opera Village in Laongo, Burkina Faso, and the Serpentine Pavilion in London in 2017. In 2022 he became the first architect of African descent to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, having earlier received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2009, and the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture in 2021.