Award-Winning Architect of African Schools to Deliver 2010 Birdair Lecture at UB

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Diébédo Francis Kéré, an award-winning architect from Burkina Faso whose practice is dedicated to sustainable architecture, will deliver the 2010 Birdair Lecture at the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning March 26 at 5:30 p.m. in 301 Crosby Hall on UB's South Campus.

The free public lecture celebrates the life of former UB instructor Walter Bird, world- renowned designer of lightweight structures and founder of the Birdair Corporation, which annually sponsors this event.

The UB School of Architecture and Planning has also mounted an exhibition titled Design Africa in the lobby of Hayes Hall, UB South Campus. It features work designed by Kéré built in Burkina Faso, Africa, and by Sir David Chipperfield built in Sudan. It is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays through March 20.

Brian Carter, dean of the UB School of Architecture and Planning, says, "Kéré is an architect with a significant commitment to education and design in Africa. His talk will offer our students a better understanding of the needs and sensibilities of communities there, and how this particular architect is helping to improve the quality of life for people in his native country."

He says both the lecture and exhibition have been planned to help students and faculty understand how materials can be used in unique ways to produce buildings that are functional for the communities they serve and, at the same time, are elegant and sustainable.

Carter adds that both events will also help advance the UB school's practice of encouraging students to study architecture, planning and design across the globe and to travel widely to experience cultures and built environments different from their own.

In 2004 Kéré received a prestigious Aga Khan award for architecture for his first building, a primary school in the village of Gando which is in the heart of Burkina Faso. This project, which was designed when he was still an architecture student, can be seen in the exhibition.

He also was one of five recipients of the 2009 Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, a prestigious international award he received for a secondary school in the village of Dano, Burkina Faso, also included in the Hayes Hall. This building received a special mention in the 6th edition of the International Sustainable Architecture Prize.

The designs of both schools have been developed to achieve comfort in an extreme climate, use local materials and adapt technologies from the industrialized world. Those who managed the projects live in the villages where the schools have been built and Kéré says he conceived them as exemplars to raise local awareness of the potential of local materials.

"The over-sailing roofs help to shade the classrooms and have been designed to encourage natural ventilation," Carter says. "They work like a fly-sheet on a tent. In many parts of Africa shade is vital and in these designs it becomes another building material."

He says the expansive roof forms also were shaped by other considerations. For example because neither conventional steel sections nor heavy lifting machinery were readily available in these villages, the architect utilized steel rebar to create structure. Usually used to reinforce concrete and invariably buried within buildings, at the Gando school rebar creates a clearly visible structural tracery that holds up the simple but elegant sail-like roof.

Kéré has an architectural practice in Berlin and teaches in Berlin's Technical University, where his courses include housing and urban development, strategies for climatically advantageous building and the sustainable utilization of materials.

He also helped to found an association that creates innovative development projects that promise a better future for the people of Burkina Faso. They include plans to improve adult education and health care and provide economic support for women.

Joshua Turner, a graduate student in UB's architecture program, helped to design and create "Design Africa," which received support UB's Department of African and African American Studies and its chair, Keith Griffler, and from Mara Huber, special assistant to UB President John B. Simpson for educational initiatives.