Photos by Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer
Schools in West Africa and elsewhere should not be technical transplants of Western styles and materials, but a blend of modern and traditional techniques that empower local populations and sustain local resources, said architect Diébédo Francis Kéré, who delivered a Dean’s Diversity Initiative lecture at the Graduate School of Design.
Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré — a recent visitor to Harvard — has an office in Berlin. But his heart is in Burkina Faso, the tiny West African country of his boyhood.
“snip”
Local workers using local materials built the school in nine months, at a cost of less than $30,000. Ten years later, said Kéré, the robust structure looks like it did on the first day. The design won an Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, inspired local imitators, and made the village famous. “The people are proud — really proud,” he said. “That’s what you can do with a little project.”
Few design projects “leave a true mark,” said GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi. Kéré’s Gando primary school is one of them. He called it a bridge “between the cultures of the West and the cultures of Africa.”
Read complete article at News Harvard Edu
Related video from our archive
Video of Diébédo Francis Kéré AG Khan award winning school project in Gando
->>>>><<<<<-
Paderborner-SJ's Web Blog
