Kéré Architecture

An approach to architecture

Read Kéré Architecture through Gando Primary School and Lycée Schorge, where shade, ventilation, materials and construction skills shape civic space.

Source-linked study published on 1 October 2026. Chinese sections are summaries. Reading notes: Practice establishment (2005) is distinguished from first building completion (2001). Environmental mechanisms are described without unverified numerical performance claims.

Practice and the first building

Kéré Architecture was established in 2005, while Francis Kéré's Gando Primary School was completed in 2001. Keeping those dates distinct reveals how the built work preceded the formal office. The practice's official account describes a Berlin design studio coordinating with a Burkina Faso team and local specialists. That working structure is relevant to its architecture: material choices and construction details depend on the people able to make them. Its educational projects offer a particularly clear way to examine the relationship between design expertise, local participation and environmental conditions. Practice profile and Gando project record.

Separating the roof from the classroom

At Gando, clay-and-cement bricks provide the classroom walls, while a projecting roof shelters them from rain. The corrugated metal roof is lifted above a perforated brick ceiling, creating a route for warm air to leave the occupied space. This separation is the central architectural move: the component that takes the sun's heat does not directly form the classroom's ceiling. Windows, ceiling openings and the space beneath the roof work together as a ventilation strategy. The project's account also identifies the community's participation in construction as integral to its delivery. Official Gando Primary School account.

An inhabited edge at Lycée Schorge

Lycée Schorge in Koudougou, completed in 2016, arranges nine modules around a courtyard. Laterite walls, eucalyptus screening and ventilating towers give different environmental tasks distinct architectural forms. The screen creates shaded space outside the classrooms, allowing the circulation edge to support informal gathering. The courtyard and stepped seating extend this social role to the centre of the school. Furniture made with timber and steel offcuts from the roof construction also links the building's larger material system to its everyday fittings. Each decision can be traced through plan, section and assembly. Official Lycée Schorge account.

A transferable way of asking questions

These schools suggest a method that begins with the interactions among climate, available resources and use. The lesson for another location is to investigate those interactions with equal care before choosing a form. Copying a roof profile or timber screen would reveal little about whether it suits different rainfall, maintenance capacity or construction skills. Kéré Architecture's work is therefore most productively studied as a set of situated decisions. Its account of training and continuing collaboration gives those decisions a human context, while the buildings show how comfort and gathering can be designed together. Practice organisation and training.

Explore the GAD index

Continue with the GAD project record for Gando Primary School.

Education2001

Gando Primary School

Kéré Architecture

Gando · Burkina Faso