Francis Kéré: African architecture should stop copying the West c/o Design Indaba
Key Takeaways
On the hidden tax of spaces made for community by outsiders of the community:
“Some people came and just gave the people a new mosque. It’s good, I like presents. But this kind 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 the clay mosque. Do you know what for are the woods, on top? People use these to make the repairs every year. And by giving them a mosque made from concrete, you help them destroy their own richness.”
On bringing community into creative process and shared ownership of space:
“We put the roof with the people from the village. And come the time to put color to protect the windows against corrosion. So you start talking about color to one person, 10 minutes later you speak to 10 persons, half and hour later you speak to half of the village, 1 hour later you speak to all village. When I’m doing this, I just left, I came back and most of the time I found the building done. And you start to be angry because you are teached to use color maybe and you think man they could make it other ways. But before you start complaining somebody come and say ‘It was me who fight for this color,’ and then another one come and say ‘No it’s me,’ and then the entire village start to say ‘It’s my building.’ And what i have discovered is I just give them a frame and they play, they use it, they own it, they’re happy.”
On embracing the richness of one’s culture and heritage when creating spaces:
“How I am allowed to introduce traditional techniques in the building? In the beginning they would say, ‘We just want to have a concrete building because a school is something from France. And it has to be made of concrete and not clay.’ But look at what we do, we’re making a clay floor just to see what we can do. The young men come like this. They stand like you can see. Beating. At a certain moment their mother comes. And you can see my job. But we came together, we put everything together, and sometimes I feel like a director of an orchestra. They’re full of talent and I have to direct them...and the women come in this position. Beating. Like you can see. And giving water. Beating. Beating. Hours. Hours. And by music you can see it. Yes of course we love music, but what I have learned from my people it is, music is important, it’s more than music. Imagine we’re going to have this floor very flat. We don’t use water level, we use nothing… we’re differently strong, but with the music at a certain moment, our beats become the same. So that happens that through these techniques we become very flat classrooms that you can see.”