He was a member of the Holcim Awards 2014 jury for Africa & Middle East and the Global Holcim Awards 2018 jury. He was a keynote speaker at the 6th Holcim Forum 2019 and an expert in the workshop Local resources: Leveraging regional skills and metabolism at the 4th Holcim Forum 2013 “Economy of Sustainable Construction”. He is winner of the Holcim Awards 2011 Gold for Middle East Africa, Global Holcim Awards 2012 Gold, and the Holcim Building Better Recognition for Middle East Africa (2017).

Established in 2005, Kéré Architecture has developed an international reputation for its focus on enabling community-supported construction of sustainable and appropriate education facilities that effectively contribute to social development. The design of material-sparing structures with mud bricks and lightweight steel frames are often built by unskilled labour with an elegant economy of means.

Francis Kéré is Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate of 2022. “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. His work also reminds us of the necessary struggle to change unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, as we strive to provide adequate buildings and infrastructure for billions in need,” noted the jury.

He is Guest Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2011-) and Professor at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland (2013-). He was appointed to the newly created professorship “Architectural Design & Participation” at the Faculty of Architecture, Technische Universität München (TUM) (2020-), where he also acts as an expert for the interdisciplinary research network “Simply Build”. He is a member of the Master Jury 2022 of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

He was born the son of the village chief in Gando, a small village in Burkina Faso. Since no school existed in Gando, he went to live in the city with an uncle at seven years of age. He became a carpenter and received a scholarship to undertake an apprenticeship in Germany as a supervisor in development aid. After completing the apprenticeship, he went on to study architecture including modules in civil engineering at the Technische Universität (TU) in Berlin.

Francis Kéré felt it was his duty to contribute to his family and to the community that had supported him, and to give the next generation the opportunity to follow in his footsteps. As a university student, he built a primary school in his home village and set up the association “Schulbausteine für Gando” to fund the project with the objective of combining the knowledge he had gained in Europe, with traditional building methods from Burkina Faso.

His works in Gando, Burkina Faso include the Primary School (2001), Teacher’s Housing (2003), School Extension (2008), Library (2012), and Secondary School (2012). His first school in Gando received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004 – recognized not only for its innovative construction techniques and expressive care in artisanship but also for being built cooperatively by the Gando community. The follow-up project in Gando, a secondary school, received the Holcim Awards Gold 2011 for Middle East Africa and the Global Holcim Awards Gold 2012. The project received the first ever Holcim Building Better Recognition 2017 in honour of its influence as a realised project that has stood the test of time.

Other works in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Togo and Sudan in Africa as well as in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA include the Dano Secondary School, Burkina Faso (2007); Centre for Earth Architecture in Mopti, Mali (2010); Laongo Opera Village, Burkina Faso (under construction); Léo Medical Center, Burkina Faso (2012); and the International Red Cross & Red Crescent Museum in Geneva, Switzerland (2012). Francis Kéré became the first African architect of the Serpentine Pavilion (2017): a temporary summer pavilion by an international architect or design team who has not completed a building in England at the time of the Gallery’s invitation.

He is winner of the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine’s Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2009); BSI Swiss Architectural Award (2010), the Marcus Prize (2011) Green Planet Architects Award (2013), Schelling Architecture Foundation Award (2014), and the Kenneth Hudson Award for European Museum of the Year (2015). He received the Arnold W Brunner Memorial Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts & Letters (2017) where he was praised as “an alchemist working with local materials and technology to design buildings of meaning and beauty”. The prize is given to a preeminent architect who has made a significant contribution to architecture as art. He was recipient of the Prince Claus Laureate Award in 2017 highlighting the cultural value and importance of beautiful, sustainable, and empowering architecture. He was named Architektur & Wohnen (AW) Architect of the Year 2021. The jury selected the visionary and designer of the future for his deeply humanistic approach and the gift of seamlessly harmonizing the avant-garde, experimentalism, and optimism.

Francis Kéré was appointed as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) in 2018, recognising the importance of socially and environmentally responsible architecture. “Since I started, I always tried to incorporate the people and their environment in my designs and being recognised for it sends the message that it is important,” said Francis Kéré.

He was named in the 100 Most Influential People of 2022 by Time Magazine. The citation by David Adjaye stated that “Francis Kéré has built a career out of making places that have a transformative impact on the way in which communities and societies see and serve themselves. He is a trailblazer for his long-standing commitment to formalizing space for both social and environmental good, and in this sense his legacy lives not just in his built work but also in his general practice and methodological spirit.”

His architectural work has been the subject of solo exhibitions: Radically Simple at the Architecture Museum, Munich (2016) and The Architecture of Francis Kéré: Building for Community, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2016). His work has also been selected for group exhibitions: Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010) and Sensing Spaces, Royal Academy, London (2014).