Diébédo Francis Kéré appears on a Zoom screen in a loose white Oxford shirt and an enormous, slightly flabbergasted smile.
“Can you imagine?” the newest Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate exclaims. “I was born in Burkina Faso, in this little village where there was no school. And my father wanted me to learn how to read and write very simply because then I could then translate or read him his letters.”
Kéré spoke to NPR from Porto-Novo, the capital of Benin, where Kéré Architecture is currently working a new parliamentary building inspired by the palaver tree. It is, he says, a West African symbol of consensus building, and he hopes the building will reflect a commitment both to tradition and democratic process. “Literally speaking, it is a tree under which people come together to make decisions, to celebrate,” Kéré explains. “You know, you get to think together and everyone can be part of the debate or the discussion.”
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