2025-06-11
7 分钟The Economist.
The first thing you notice,
stepping from the scorching Sahelian sun into the laterite stone dome, is how cold it is.
There is no air conditioning, just shade and natural ventilation.
Nor is there plaster.
Diabedo Francis Kere, the architect behind the new mausoleum in Huagadougou,
Burkina Faso's capital, strives to use only what can be sourced nearby.
I'm a construction material opportunist.
He says,
I look around at what is most abundant and how people use it and try to do something new.
The result is a building so austere,
low-tech and elegant that it is like entering a temple of the ancient world.
In 2022, Mr. Carey became the first black architect to win the prestigious Pritzker Prize,
considered architecture's equivalent of the Nobel.
He is the best known of a cohort of African architects whose ideas are at the profession's cutting edge.
In particular, they are showing how to build sustainably for a warming, changing planet.
Once more, they are doing so on the cheap.
At a time when African-made music,
art and TV is crossing into the global cultural mainstream,
the continent's architecture and design are becoming increasingly influential too.