As a boy sitting in hot, unventilated village classrooms in Burkina Faso, West Africa, Diébédo Francis Kéré dreamed about learning carpentry so he could one day build better — and cooler — buildings. This week Kéré, now 56, became the first African to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field’s most distinguished award. He did so in part by designing and building a school in his home village of Gando in 2001 that mitigates the intense heat. Bricks of local clay form a structure that keeps cool air inside while allowing heat to vent through a brick ceiling, creating a comfortable interior without the need for mechanical air conditioning. Kéré’s structure helped increase the student body from 120 to 700 students and launched additional structures by Kéré, including housing for teachers and a library. His career has since been defined by locally made sustainable structures that transform communities. “I am hoping to change the paradigm, push people to dream and undergo risk,” Kéré said in the announcement of the award. “It is not because you are rich that you should waste material. It is not because you are poor that you should not try to create quality. Everyone deserves quality, everyone deserves luxury, and everyone deserves comfort. We are interlinked and concerns in climate, democracy and scarcity are concerns for us all.”

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