Other projects
Gando: association center for women
The building project includes a classroom, a meeting room, an office, a kitchen and bathrooms. Likewise, the center has a warehouse for agricultural and homemade products. The target group of the project is a community of approximately 300 women from the village of Gando and the surrounding area, in the province of Boulgou in Burkina Faso. The women's association center aims to improve the quality of life of women in the area in a sustainable way, offering a platform to improve their economic and educational situation. The multifunctional center will also be used as a place for adult education, meetings and information sessions.
Gando: library
The library building constitutes a place of articulation between the first educational building and its extension. The particular elliptical shape differentiates it from other educational buildings. The roof of the library features a distinctive innovation, using local technology. Terracotta vessels, traditionally made by the women of the village, have been cut on site and placed on the reinforced concrete roof, in order to create openings for light and ventilation. A rectangular corrugated tin roof extends over the roof and beyond the library, creating a shaded area, completed by a wraparound façade of fine eucalyptus columns.
Gando: "Mango Trees" project
Kéré's dream was not only to build schools and provide education, but also to create an oasis where the needs of the villagers would be met. To do this, he has started a mango tree cultivation project. The project wants to address one of the most important problems in the region. Famines are rare, but malnutrition is widespread in Gando and the surrounding area. The most important food is “foufou”, which consists of crushed and boiled millet. This food contains few vitamins and many people often eat it only once a day. Mango, on the other hand, represents an important source of nutrition, containing useful vitamins to strengthen the immune system. In addition, mango trees represent a vital source of shade, in an area where temperatures can reach up to 45 °C. In such a hot environment, the cool space under the mango trees becomes an important meeting place for the community, where the children play, study and rest. Another objective of the project is to teach children to be responsible. Each student receives a tree: this way they learn how to plant and care for them. This acquired knowledge will then be transmitted to their parents and the next generation. Due to rapid population growth and the predominant use of wood as a fuel source, Burkina Faso has lost 60% of its trees in the last 15 years. That has led to detrimental consequences for the environment. Trees provide shade, protect the soil from erosion, stop the desertification process and regulate the groundwater regime. In addition, trees contribute to soil fertility and biodiversity, providing habitat for several species. With the hot, dry climate and serious lack of water between October and June, many plants and small trees cannot survive. Furthermore, many of them are destroyed by termites. Pesticides and fertilizers are too expensive and harmful to the environment. Kéré has developed an innovative concept: in the planting preparation phase a hole is dug, which is filled with old bones and meat. Shortly after, the bones and meat attract ants, which colonize the hole and warn against termites. That allows trees to grow without the need for insecticides. Animals such as roosters and chickens are attracted to the shade of the trees, and their compost serves as a natural fertilizer for them, without the need to use artificial fertilizers. Instead of watering them twice a day, Kéré has used this system: traditional clay jars are placed near the trees, with a kind of dripper in the container and directed directly towards the roots. This system allows the water to fall slowly. The cups prevent evaporation and need to be filled only once a week, giving the trees a small but constant supply of water. In this way, a simple and effective method can have a positive impact on the lives of the inhabitants of Gando.[9].
Gando: secondary school
The new complex includes 12 classrooms, an entrance building, a library, an administrative building and sports fields, with a capacity for approximately 1,000 students. Construction began in May 2011; The inauguration is scheduled for the end of 2013. Due to the extreme weather conditions of the region, the building has been designed to integrate all the interior spaces of the school into a kind of “oasis”. The project proposes to use resources sustainably, and guarantee natural ventilation without the use of electricity. A system of low-tech collectors built into the ground supply a passive evaporative cooling system. The rich vegetation at ground level preventively filters the air at the entrance which, channeled through buried collectors, cools the classrooms through openings in the pavement. The hot air in the classrooms rises and escapes through openings in the roof, and flows into the space between the roof and the roof. The large cantilevered roof allows air to circulate freely under it, facilitating rapid air renewal. To avoid excessive aridity of the terrain, the trees planted around the buildings are watered thanks to the collection of rainwater. The design of the school is inspired by the traditional rural groups of Burkina Faso: the different parts of the program are incorporated into the rural landscape, forming a protected courtyard and thus protecting itself from the dust and sand blown from the east by the Harmattan wind. The structure is instead open on its western side, exposing the buildings to the cool western breeze. Thanks to its innovative design, the secondary school project won the 2012 Holcim Gold award.[10] The school uses the same design used for the primary school extension, with a wide corrugated iron roof raised above an earthen vault roof.[11].
Laongo: Opera Village
The Opera House for Africa is a project launched by the artist Christoph Schlingensief. Despite its extreme poverty, the strong sense of national pride and the peculiarity of being one of the most important film and theater centers in Africa, make Burkina Faso the ideal place for Schlingensief's project. The artist involves Kéré in the project of the work, which uses the same methods already experimented in his previous works for the construction of the complex: integration of the local population, sustainability and use of local materials. The site chosen as a possible construction site for the work was deeply damaged by the serious floods of August 2009, which is why Kéré modified the initial projects, developing prototypes of houses, integrated into the "Opera House" project, to help the population of Laongo rebuild their homes. The Opera Village site, measuring 12 hectares, is located on a small plateau in Laongo, very close to the capital Ouagadougou, with views of the landscape of the Sahel area. The project includes a theater, some laboratories, a medical center, residential modules for staff, a well and a school for 500 children, including music and film classrooms. The theater is located in the center of the project. Originally the box and stalls were designed and built for a play in Germany and were not used. They are now located in Burkina Faso and will be transformed to respond to the needs of the “Opera Village”.[12] For the project, Kéré slightly modifies its structure: he maintains the support structure of the box and the rotating stage. Fabrics from Burkina Faso will be used for the seats and interior walls. The theater will be completely covered by a 15-meter-high covering.[13].
The construction of a health center within the Opera Village responds to the desire to improve basic health care for the local population. The health center, known as the "Centre de Santé et de Promotion Sociale" or "CSPS", will have the necessary infrastructure to facilitate stays for several days, except for serious cases. A winding path leads from the Opera House to the health center, with views over the savanna. The Laongo CSPS is divided into three parts, arranged around a central waiting room, with a dentistry section, a gynecology and obstetrics section and a general medicine unit. To provide the center with a pleasant environment for the community, patients and their families, several patios have been included in the project, with shaded seats. Each building has its own interior patio. Considering that the patient's view from the bed has to be as pleasant as possible, the windows have been conceived as frames. Each frame allows you to discover a different part of the landscape. That is why three different modules have been developed, of different dimensions: each "window" has been individually inserted into the external part according to the angles and the composition (with a mosquito net and a glass or metal shutter). The windows in the courtyard walls have been inverted so that the openings allow views from the outside. As in the Opera Village, the priority was to use local materials such as clay and laterite. Most walls are composed of a double layer of compressed earth bricks. The extensive roofs typical of Kéré's design could have been a solution for protecting the walls, but they would have been incompatible with the design of the exterior walls and out of budget. The presence of an outer layer of perforated bricks in concrete covered with clay plaster makes the presence of a protective overhang cover dispensable. The CSPS work should be completed in the last months of 2013.
Léo: medical center
In 2012, Kéré Architecture began a new project to build a medical center in Léo, near the border between Burkina Faso and Ghana, approximately 150 kilometers south of the capital Ouagadougou. The center has been conceived to also be at the service of the towns in the surrounding area, since due to the lack of staff and the lack of clinics in the area, the district hospital is oversaturated with work. The project is managed by the German charitable foundation "Operieren in Afrika." Due to limited funding, prefabricated modules are used as the basis of the project. As for the secondary school, the walls are built with compressed earth blocks, and the roofs are made of tin. The modules are arranged so that their roofs overlap, in order to guarantee greater shade and protection. In the final phase of the project, the space between the modules will become an open circulation space, equipped with benches and trees.
Zhou Shan Harbor Development, China
The Zhoushan Archipelago in the People's Republic of China is the site of an experimental urban reintegration project, led by Chinese architect Wang Shu. Zhoushan is the Chinese fishing capital and is located at the entrance to the Yangtze River Delta; It has a population of approximately one million inhabitants. The purpose of the project, started in 2009, is to transform the industrial dock area, Putuo, into a tourist and cultural district. The dock will remain operational and the architecture will maintain a dialogue between modernity, history and the heritage of the area. The site is located on an island almost 300 meters from the mainland. The chosen plot of land contains a great diversity of buildings, piers and warehouses. The landscape of the place is varied: in the southern part there is a steep mountain slope, while the northern side is crossed by rivers. The mountains, the sea, the city and the boats form an extraordinary setting as a location. At night, the city's silhouette is illuminated and the mountain's profile is reflected in the water of the fish market. Diébédo Francis Kéré has designed an exhibition gallery, an information center, artistic studios and a cultural creativity garden for the area. The project has been designed around a platform that extends along the site to the mountain that delimits the west side, serving as a transition space between the artificial environment that has been created with the development of the district and the natural environment behind it. The platform also channels the route of an old road into a tunnel, creating more space for new constructions. The building under the platform was once an ice factory. Kéré Architecture uses the existing water reservoir above the building, transforming it into a garden with plants growing around the water. Visitors to the three Chinese tea houses within the garden will benefit from the pleasant air quality and the beautiful view of the mountain and the site. Two new buildings above the platform provide the necessary space for the exhibition hall and art gallery. The first building is located at the end of the platform, near the mountain. The second, identical in shape and dimension, is placed perpendicular to the first. The exhibition space can function independently or together with the artistic studios. The complex, together with the three ponds of the tea house, delimits an open patio on the platform. Additionally, the roof section of the old factory has been cut into two halves, enabling a walkway between them. Sunlight can penetrate to the ground floor. Interior and exterior are visually connected, as each building opens to a series of views that invite visitors to cross the spaces and discover the diversities of the creativity garden. A wide open-air staircase ramp leads visitors to the top of the platform, offering the pleasant opportunity to sit and relax during the summer. The materials used and the ventilation system are simple and low-tech. Concrete has been used as a basic construction material thanks to its resistance to humidity. The main structure of the factory will be restored. The highest possible level of transparency is obtained thanks to glass elements present from the floor to the ceiling. Sunlight streams into the rooms, creating countless views of the entire site. The southern and eastern facades are particularly exposed to the sun during the summer. The layers of bamboo sticks serve as external protection, characterized by their natural irregularity. The northern and western facades facing the mountains and the dock are left free. Wooden panels alternate with glass elements, fitting the need for transparency and protection from sunlight. To prevent overheating during the summer, air is forced into the interstitial space between the layers of the façade. The open layout of the buildings supports this ventilation method.[14].
Museum of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, Geneva
The new space where the permanent exhibition is displayed at the Museum of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, opened in 2012 and called "The Humanitarian Adventure",[15] has been designed by three internationally renowned architects with different cultural backgrounds. Each architect has worked on a theme: Gringo Cardia") (Brazil) has worked on the theme of "defending human dignity", while the theme of "Reducing natural risks" has been developed by Shigeru Ban (Japan). The theme addressed by Francis Kéré (Burkina Faso) was "Rebuilding family ties".[16] The dark entrance passage, delimited by hemp concrete walls, encourages the visitor to take emotions into account. terrifying and suffocating family tragedies in a conflict. The central element in this part of the exhibition is a tower, also made of hemp concrete, which represents an architectural reference to the traditional cabins of nuclear families. The tower lets in little light and has a rusty-looking Corten steel background. This space is a monument to tragedies such as the Srebrenica Massacre. war. The connection between nature and family is an important sub-theme in the exhibition part developed by Francis Kéré. The “Witness Room” seeks a direct contrast with the tower, focusing attention on transparency and hope instead of darkness and despair. This space emphasizes the important role played by eyewitnesses in humanitarian action. missing.