Francis Kéré, first African architect at Serpentine

Burkina Faso-born Diébédo Francis Kéré is the first African architect to create an ephemeral pavilion in Hyde Park, in the heart of London, Serpentine Gallery, which entrusts this prestigious mission every year to a world-renowned architect.

At 51, he was the first African — naturalized German — to be entrusted with the conception of the summer pavilion 2017 of Serpentine Gallery, London’s high place of contemporary art and marshal stick of stars of architecture. He has already been on a podium with one of them, British Norman Foster, who was the first of his village to attend school. The internationally-renowned Germano-Burkinabé was selected for the prestigious Pritzker, Nobel Prize for Architecture which was awarded in March to a Catalan trio.

But Diébédo Francis Kéré carries, visible on his temples, the ritual scarifications which inscribe him in a lineage. “The reason I do what I do is my community,” he explains in Munich, before questioning himself what “to do with this privilege of having crossed the distance that separates two, so distinct, worlds.”

Inspired by his city in Burkina Faso

To design his pavilion, Diébédo Francis Kéré was inspired by a tree in his hometown of Gando, place of “encounter” and “life”, says the gallery in a statement.

The architect imagined a work covered with a large roof resting on a metal frame and imitating a canopy. The air circulates freely, but the pavilion “nevertheless offers a shelter against the rain of London and the heat of summer”.

“I wanted my contribution (…) not only to improve the relationship with the nature of visitors, but also to give people new ways of interacting,” said the Berlin-based architect.

His first training was in Germany

Diébédo Francis Kéré has never forgotten his first flight by plane, when he flew from his native Burkina Faso at the age of 20 to follow a training course in Germany that was supposed to make him a “development activist”.

First, the ocher earth, punctuated by villages huddled around the granaries of millet. Then the landscape grew greener, as we flew over Ivory Coast. Finally, on the other side of the sea, this space drawn with the line, furrowed by highways: the gray concrete, the visual shock of an industrialized society in the extreme, so far from the universe that he had known during his African childhood.

“That gray, it marked me,” said Diébédo Francis Kéré. Just like his first snowy winter: “In Munich, there was a place with a thermometer. I went every night to see how far the temperature could go.

Several quality works on his list

Diébédo Francis Kéré is known for having designed an elegant primary school in Gando, his hometown, praising local culture and crafts. He has also worked on the Museum of the Cross and the Red Crescent in Geneva.

The Anglo-Iraqi Zaha Hadid was the first to participate in the Serpentine Gallery initiative in 2000. Several other great names in architecture also participated, such as Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, and the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei.

The pavilion was unveiled on the 23rd of June and will remain open until the 8th of October.

h/t: The Guardian