FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

I asked my mother one day (at seven years old), - why do these women love me so much? (about the women of Gando who gave him their last coin they had with them, a show of deep affection), she only replied: they are contributing to pay for your education in the hope that one day you will succeed and you will come back and help improve the quality of life in the community. (KÉRÉ, 2017)13

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

“Corona, this crisis, opened our eyes. We have to find local solutions to solve global problems.” This phrase said by Francis Kéré during an online interview, promoted by the International Union of Architects, in 2020, within the context of the worldwide spread of the COVID-19 virus, says a lot about the architect’s vision of the past, present, and future.

The scenario in which we live categorically reveals, both positively and negatively, the power that each individual - citizen - carries with them in their actions. As architects and urban planners, it is no different. Diébédo teaches, through his work, the importance of looking back, understanding shared heritages in a critical way, and apprehending the concepts and practices that have applicability in the present. Thus, he traces a conscious path towards the future, by establishing a dialogue between pre-existence and technology, in the constant improvement of construction techniques, materiality, infrastructure, among others.

Diébédo understood the importance of the profession he chose and the potential that it acquires when it is shared among the people of a community and the extent to which this collective construction can reach, in the case of the village of Gando, going beyond its borders and, little by little, transforming the nation of Burkina Faso. The Serpentine Pavilion 2017 is one of the links between today and yesterday in the architect’s life, in which it personifies the fusion between cultural and social traditions with contemporary technological experimentation, spreading a vision of architecture that combines personal and local contexts in thinking and doing. In an interview with Anna Fixsen and Miriam Sitz of Architectural Record magazine in 2017, Francis Kéré was asked if people from Gando, his hometown, would like to be architects now and attend architecture schools. He replied: “Friends have told me that children say they want to be ‘Francis’. I became a profession. This is wonderful.”

13 Excerpt and information extracted from the ‘TED Talk’ given by Francis Kéré, in 2013, entitled “Diébédo Francis Kéré: How to build with clay… and with a community”.

(Opposite page) Serpentine Pavilion 2017. Photo: Laurian Ghinitoiu