Per reporter: Xie Tao Per jing editor: Tang Yuan
In 1983, I.M. Pei, the "Light of the Chinese," won the Pritzker Prize for his dazzling modernist architecture; in 1999, Norman Foster, a pioneer of high-tech architecture, won the highest honor in architecture; and in 2004, Zaha Hadid, the "Queen of Lines," became the first female architect to receive a General Prize.
This year, the "little-known" West African architect Francis Kéré reinvented the imagination of the "Nobel Prize in architecture" with rural clay. His works are rarely colourful in glass and metal, all clay from the West African countryside; there are no whimsical curves and curves, only practical red brick columns and iron frames; not as magnificent as the Louvre, but it is a comfortable place for locals.
As Africa's first prize winner, Carlyle has long worked in a restrictive and marginalized environment. He used regional materials to build modern buildings beyond the construction itself, using design as an anchor to change the direction of community development, proving that architecture can exceed its use function and bring about a social impact that cannot be ignored. His works reflect the tired present, those persistent, precious, and still clinging to the "heroic ideals".
Francis Carlyle Image Source: Courtesy of respondents
"For me, architecture is where life takes place, with important social functions. Many people focus on the building itself, but ignore the rapid changes in the environment in which it is located. The dwelling we need to build should be a place where we can comfort and 'shade' each other, where people can derive pride and sustained and inspiring strength. Carlyle said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Economic News reporter.
As the Prize jury commented, "Carlyle is pioneering sustainable buildings on land that is desperately scarce." He was both an architect and a servant, changing the lives of countless inhabitants of one of the often forgotten parts of the planet through beautiful, humble, bold creativity, clear architectural language, and mature thoughts. ”
Grow and take root in barren soil
Carlyle was born in Gando, Burkina Faso in 1965. Lack of water and barrenness form the background of Carlyle's childhood memories. "At that time, we were running all day for food and drinking water." Carlyle said.
Gando Village is like a large community, where residents live in simplicity, take care of each other, and build houses together. The community life of childhood full of warmth and closeness has since deeply influenced Carlyle's architectural philosophy.
Carlyle was lucky in this "white-pitched" village — he was the son of the village chief and the first child in the village to have the opportunity to study. At the age of seven, Carlyle "left his hometown" for more than twenty kilometers to go to the city to attend primary school. In a cement-built school building, more than 100 students are crammed into cramped classrooms, sweltering and hot.
During the holidays, Carlyle returns home, where her grandmother tells ancient stories in her dimly lit room. Everyone huddled together, and the voice of grandmother echoed in the room, enveloping us as well. She would beckon us to get closer, forming a safe place – this was my first perception of 'architecture'. Carlyle recalled.
At the end of the holiday, Carlyle went door to door to say goodbye. The women lifted the corners of their clothes and took out a close-fitting coin from their pockets to give to young Carlyle, which represented a wish in local culture and carried the hope of the whole village for Carlyle to return from school one day. This scene was deeply imprinted in Carlyle's mind. "They have nothing but are still trying to support my dreams." Carlyle said.
Francis Carlyle Image Source: Courtesy of respondents
In 1985, like Paul Coelho's fantastic journey as a shepherd boy, Carlyle embarked on a journey to Europe, working in Berlin, Germany. Coming from a remote area, he learned to make roofs and furniture during the day and made up lessons at night. After a long and arduous journey, Carlyle was able to study at the Technical University of Berlin in 1995 and received an advanced degree in architecture in 2004.
The difficulty of studying, Carlyle rarely mentioned. However, it is conceivable that the huge cultural and rich differences are like a huge chasm in front of him. Countless late nights in Berlin, Carlyle looked at the southern sky and felt physically and mentally exhausted, and only the dream of returning to his hometown and rebuilding his home supported this foreigner from West Africa.
Back in Burkina Faso, back in the village of Gando, back to a place where there is no neon flash, where building a haven-like school is Carlyle's most simple dream. During his studies in Berlin, Carlyle forgot to eat and sleep, and through continuous publicity and fundraising, he finally collected fifty thousand DOLLARs. "I was thinking about how to use the money to build a brand new elementary school in Gando." Carlyle said.
Returning home and building a "utopia" on earth
When Carlyle happily returned to Gando to plan to build an elementary school out of clay, he was opposed by most people.
Clay, which is a building material made locally by the local poor, is difficult to withstand the heavy rainstorm of the rainy season, and is neither durable nor "high-grade" in the eyes of the locals. Building a house out of clay sounds like a "utopia." Everyone expected Carlyle to return home with advanced European building materials and technology, but Carlyle advocated building schools with cheap local materials. "That's what you've learned in Europe?" "It is better to build a house out of clay than to work in the field." For a moment, the surrounding doubts were everywhere.
How to prove the feasibility of clay? Carlyle built a vault overnight with clay bricks. At dawn, he stood on the top and shouted, "Folks, believe me, let's do it together!" "The villagers walked up to the top of the vault in disbelief, tentatively walked around, then ran and jumped, and finally laughed at Carlyle...
"By mixing a certain proportion of cement and pressing and forming, such clay bricks are not only stronger, but also effectively gather and dissipate heat, which is more suitable for Gando's environment than higher cost cement." Carlyle said.
Under Carlyle's hard persuasion, the residents of the whole village were mobilized, and on the day of the start of construction, the men moved the brick walls bare-chested, and the women lined up with clay pots to support...
Manpower problems are solved, but more problems follow. How do you get the most out of the light while taking away the sun's heat? How to keep the room cool and ventilated without air conditioning and cooling? Carlyle has designed a package of solutions tailored to local conditions. Double roofs, thermal mass, wind towers, indirect lighting, cross ventilation and shading rooms... These ad hoc, highly expressive architectural vocabularies are his central strategy.
Gando Primary School Image Source: Courtesy of respondents
In the absence of other modern systems, Carlyle combined traditional craftsmanship to create the most "local" building. In Carlyle's view, "a lot of knowledge and experience is already in this land, all you need is to learn to improve." ”
In fact, involving the entire village in the construction is Carlyle's longer-term goal: through the Gando Elementary School project, young people can learn architectural knowledge and skills, stay local, and help the community grow together.
Later, Gando Elementary School was like a super gravitational field, bringing many positive changes to the local area - the number of educated students in the village increased from 120 to 700; the teachers' dormitories, campuses, libraries were expanded... Carlyle believes that all of this is "The Power of Community."
Experiment, activate the community with buildings
The success of Gando Primary School has greatly affected the villages in Africa that are far behind the construction of modern cities. In Carlyle's eyes, "Gando Elementary School is a modern building without Westernization. ”
With this exploration, Carlyle won one of the world's most influential architectural awards, the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, in 2004, which made him famous in the architectural world.
Top architects have poured in olive branches, and investors from around the world have extended invitations to Carlyle to work on some of the largest commercial construction projects in Europe. In the face of the "sixpence" in front of him, Carlyle is most worried about the moon in his hometown. He declined the invitation of investors, returned to his hometown, and began an even larger "architectural experiment."
The Gando Design initially laid the foundation for Carlyle's architectural philosophy of using the most accessible materials and local craftsmanship to improve human settlements, activate communities and enhance community cohesion. In the following years, under the impetus of Carlyle, more and more "Gando design" was promoted in the local area and applied to primary schools, orphanages, secondary schools, junior colleges, medical centers...
Like the women who took coins out of the corners of their coats, Carlyle threw what he had learned and spared no effort in the land. "I want young people to return to their homes and bring their communities back to life." Carlyle said.
Meanwhile, outside Burkina Faso, countries such as Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda have followed Carlyle's architectural designs. In the land of Africa, closed and backward communities are slowly activated.
With a focus on community philosophy, Carlyle's architectural design demonstrates sensitivity to the bioclimate environment and local sustainability.
In 2010, Carlyle designed the "Opera Village", still using clay, redstone, and wood, a larger, spiral-shaped community that includes schools and medical centers, so that more children can enjoy better education and medical resources without leaving their homes;
In 2014, Carlyle designed Schulg Middle School, where the fence façade ensures that sunlight shines through the trunks of trees and isolates the outdoor heat;
In 2021, Carlyle designed the Lions of Kenya start-up park, using stones from local quarries and stacked towers for passive cooling, minimizing the reliance of technical equipment on air conditioning.
Lion Start-up Garden Source: Courtesy of respondents
In Carlyle's view, architecture needs to adapt to the needs and economic conditions of the people of the region, and its sustainability can be achieved by using local materials and making the most of them, and by responding to prevailing climatic conditions. He joked to reporters, "Actually, I'm just a 'material opportunist.'" ”
Carlyle is well aware that architecture is not a product, but a process, and his construction is done in conjunction with the residents of the community. Regional materials, integrated construction methods and localization implementation processes together constitute his "architectural experiment".
"I hope that in the initial stages of construction, the community can participate, and the building is closely linked to the land where it is located, the people on the land, so as to generate long-term and moving power." Carlyle told reporters.
The way forward, for the local culture to speak out
Growing up in West Africa and studying in Europe, Carlyle maintained a highly conscious sensitivity to the cultural and social environment that permeated his architectural philosophy. He wanted to break away from the old system and explore a set of architectural languages suitable for Africa.
In Carlyle's view, "in the field of architecture, we have always faced the challenge of western cement and glass architecture full of attraction and becoming a 'dominant' existence. Many architects want to devote themselves to building like that, but the reality is that our resources and environment are beyond our reach. ”
Carlyle admits, "Nowadays, the term 'green building' is more popular, and many people want to maintain the brand image, but they have not really practiced, in fact, nothing has changed." Such an approach is not only wrong but also dangerous. ”
In the tide of globalization and commercialism, Carlyle is like a Sisyphus pushing a boulder, tirelessly pushing west African local culture to where the sun can shine again and again, and sometimes issuing a "dull low roar".
"We live in an era of globalization, under the great complexity and multi-faceted nature, many local cultures face the phenomenon of 'aphasia'. Only when there is sufficient full exchange and mutual learning can different local cultures seek common ground while reserving differences and give their voices out. Carlyle told reporters.
He noted with concern that "modern architecture faces enormous challenges such as population growth, resource shortages, climate change... We need to respond with more thoughtful and innovative buildings. ”
Today, Carlyle's work has long since expanded beyond Africa to Denmark, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, including temporary and permanent buildings and implanting strong West African cultural imagery. At the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Carlyle's art installation Sarbalé Ke is named after his native Pisa language, meaning "House of Celebrations," whose design is inspired by the hollow baobab tree shape.
Sarbalé Ke Art Installation, 2019, California, USA Image source: Courtesy of the interviewee
In the Serpentine Gallery in London, England, its central structure is taken from the shape of a large tree, and the winding and disconnected walls around the periphery are composed of triangular indigo blue modules, which are the color of power in Carlyle's home culture and the color of the blue bouquet cloth worn as a child.
Serpentine Gallery, 2017, London Image source: Courtesy of respondents
Carlyle has traced back to its roots again and again, returning to its roots. Its architectural design is highly interactive with the environment, achieving a personal balance between traditional experience, low technology, high technology and complex and diverse local cultures.
Looking at the Prize winners of the Pritzker Prize for nearly 20 years, Carlyle, like Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog and de Mellon, has adhered to traditional culture and innovated with it, and perhaps the biggest difference is that Carlyle lives in an environment where poverty is far worse than ordinary people can imagine.
In the view of Wang Shu, a well-known contemporary architect in China, "this year's winner is not just an African architect, but an architect who has stepped out of the barriers of globalization and truly returned to the locality with a broader vision." ”
In addition to the cold bricks and stones, in the tired life, Carlyle, who is nearly sixty years old, still continues to practice his "heroic ideal". He told reporters, "The award is a great honor for me, an inspiration, but also a responsibility, I will continue to adhere to the previous belief, with energy, brave forward." ”
Journalist's Note
As I sat in front of a computer screen, from Gando Elementary School, to the Kenya Lion Start-up Park, to the Serpentine Gallery in London, flipping through Carlyle's work over the years, he was on top of the hot savannah, directing local villagers to shape the clay and level the ground, thinking about how to build a suitable home out of scarce materials.
Carlyle's work and experience show us how locality can become a universal possibility. Carlyle has always maintained a high degree of cultural and social sensitivity, developing a bottom-up architectural language that opens up architectural practices that are highly integrated with tradition and modernity, locality and globality.
Outside of Le Clézio's The African, coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians, and Gurna's "Literature of the Diaspora," Carré and his work reconstruct the imagination and understanding of Africa to the world, illuminating once again the "heroic ideals" of the neglected and misunderstood regions and the people who lived on that land.
As Rem Koolhaas put it, "The beauty of architecture is that it is a leap of faith, but it must be a very hard leap of faith." "In Francis Carlyle, we see such beauty.
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