Burkina Faso-born architect who built the first school in his home village gets $150m project approved
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré’s design proposals for a museum of art in Las Vegas were approved last week.
The $150m project has been granted 1.5 acres of land in Symphony Park following the submission of Kéré Architecture’s initial concept.
In 2022, Burkina Faso-born Kéré became the first native African to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Recipients of the award, founded in 1979, receive US$100,000, a citation certificate, and a bronze medallion.
The 59-year-old’s nomination featured a series of selected works, including the Serpentine Pavillion (2017) in London, the National Park of Mali (2010) and Sarbalé Ke, a temporary art installation for the 2019 Coachella Music Festival in California.
> Also read: Francis Kéré wins the 2022 Pritzker Prize
His latest scheme in Symphony Park, the major cultural development in the heart of Las Vegas’ downtown, is a 90,000sqft art museum which will serve the city’s more than two million residents.
The building will feature two storeys of exhibition space elevated above an open plaza and adjacent sculpture park. The plaza will be used as a ‘front porch’ where public amenities can be enjoyed alongside community events.
Kéré is known for putting sustainability at the centre of his projects and using traditional building methods learned during his upbringing in Burkina Faso.
As Kéré’s hometown of Gando did not have a school, his father, the village chief, sent him to the nearest one in the city of Tenkodogo, making him the first child from his community to receive an education.
After completing a vocational carpentry apprenticeship in Berlin, Kéré studied architecture at Technische Universität Berlin on a scholarship.
During his studies, he set up the Kéré Foundation and used the funding to build the first school in Gando as his diploma project. This initiative earned him the 2004 Aga Khan Award for Architecture. He founded his architecture firm in Berlin a year later.
The architect is a visiting professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Yale School of Architecture.
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