Francis Kéré wins the Pritzker Prize 2022

African architect Diébédo Francis Kéré has been announced as the winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize 2022, organized by the Pritzker Foundation.

 Architect, educator and activist Francis Keré (Burkina Faso, 1965) is the founder and leader of Kéré Architecture, with offices in Berlin, Germany. This distinction makes Francis Kéré the first African architect to obtain this recognition in the history of the Pritzker Prize (Philip Johnson was the first architect to receive it in 1979).

 Kéré Architecture coins rewards such as the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Architecture (2021), the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (2004), Chevalier de L’Ordre National of Burkina Faso (2006), the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009), Swiss Architectural Award (2010), the Marcus Prize (2011), the Global LafargeHolcim Gold (2012), the Schelling Architecture Foundation Award (2014), the Prince Claus Award (2017), amongst others.

 In the words of the members of the 2022 jury:

 «Francis Kéré has found brilliant, inspiring and game-changing ways to answer these questions over the last decades. His cultural sensitivity not only delivers social and environmental justice, but guides his entire process, in the awareness that it is the path towards the legitimacy of a building in a community. He knows, from within, that architecture is not about the object but the objective; not the product, but the process.»

 «Francis Kéré’s work is, by its essence and its presence, fruit of its circumstances. In a world where architects are building projects in the most diverse contexts – not without controversies – Kéré contributes to the debate by incorporating local, national, regional and global dimensions in a very personal balance of grass roots experience, academic quality, low tech, high tech, and truly sophisticated multiculturalism. In the Serpentine pavilion, for example, he successfully translated into a universal visual language and in a particularly effective way, a long-forgotten essential symbol of primordial architecture worldwide: the tree.»

 «For the gifts he has created through his work, gifts that go beyond the realm of the architecture discipline, Francis Kéré is named the 2022 Pritzker Prize Laureate.»

 The jury of the 2022 Pritzker award was formed by the following professionals:

 – Alejandro Aravena, Chair

– André Aranha Corrêa do Lago

– Barry Bergdoll

– Deborah Berke

– Stephen Breyer

– André Aranha Correa do Lago

– Kazuyo Sejima

– Benedetta Tagliabue

– Wang Shu

– Manuela Lucá-Dazio, Excecutive Director

Here you can find the official announcement of the 2022 Pritzker Award

 The following is a compilation of the most relevant projects of Francis Kéré studio