Francis Kéré

Francis Kéré's riveting first-person account reveals the ideas and values that drive him and his socially engaged architectural practice. The 2022 laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize covers 26 key projects, illustrated with many unseen sketches, photographs, and drawings in a volume beautifully crafted by the Amsterdam-based graphic design studio of Irma Boom.

Featured works include his Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, the Gando school projects, national assembly designs for Burkina Faso and Benin, the Thomas Sankara Memorial, and the recently revealed Las Vegas Museum of Art. Kéré's own voice moves effortlessly between poetry and pragmatism. From the technicalities of cutting bricks on site to the political and environmental forces shaping his designs, he delights in both hands-on craft and big thinking. One chapter subtitle—How to funnel imagination into the grid of rules (without preventing it from flying)—says it all.