Es klingt so wahnwitzig wie das Opernhaus-Projekt in Werner Herzogs „Fitzcarraldo“: Christoph Schlingensief will im afrikanischen Burkina Faso ein Festspielhaus bauen. Warum diese Idee sehr viel besser ist, als es den Anschein hat, und wieso bei der Verwirklichung vor allem Afrikaner zum Zuge kommen sollen, erklärt Diébédo Francis Kéré, Schlingensiefs Architekt, im tip-Gespräch
tip: Mr Kéré, you are building a festival theatre, some even speak of an opera house, in Burkina Faso in Africa for the German director Christoph Schlingensief. Why does Burkina Faso need this?
Diébédo Francis Kéré: I asked myself the same question when I was approached about the project. Peter Anders, Goethe-Institut’s coordinator for Africa, talked to me in 2008 in Johannesburg, where I was giving a lecture. He told me that Christoph Schlingensief was looking for a site and an architect to build an opera house in Africa, and suggested that I get in touch with him when I was back in Germany. My reaction was to laugh. I thought the whole thing was a joke.
tip: You became known to a public interested in architecture when you received the renowned Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2004, which includes prize money of 70,000 euros. Your submitted to the competition a school you had built for less than 50,000 euros in your home village Gando in Burkina Faso, competing against such designs as the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, a project worth 1.2 billion US dollars. What is special about your school?
Kéré: I had built this school in 2001. At the time, I was still a student at Technische Universität Berlin, and I founded the association Schulbausteine für Gando e.V. [Building Blocks for a School in Gando] through which I collected donations. In wanted a sustainable and locally suitable, adjusted building for this school. In Burkina Faso, there are many cheap building materials like mud, but little money, so I wanted to use mud. I wanted to use cheap materials to build a modern building suitable for the climate conditions in Burkina Faso. By climate condition, I mean: 40 degrees Celsius in the shade. If you sit in a low-ceilinged room made of concrete, with a roof made of corrugated steel, then this room gets hotter than 40 degrees. So unbearably hot that you can’t learn there. Climate conditions also mean that there are rainy seasons when building walls can be destroyed by aggressive rain, and in addition, you have to struggle against rising moisture from the ground.
tip: How did you solve these problems?
Kéré: The goal was, as architects would say, a ‘constructive solution’. That means: roofs that extend far beyond the walls, thus protecting them from rain, and a foundation that prevents water from rising. In addition, I needed a ventilation system that works without requiring energy. There is no electricity in Gando – quite apart from the fact that Burkina Faso doesn’t have any money for energy. The roof of the school was built in such a way that the hot air rising up can be released, and openings positioned lower in the building provide fresh air.
‘Actually, we can’t really afford to bring in expensive experts from abroad.’(Diébédo Francis Kéré)tip: How are houses usually built in Burkina Faso, above all representative buildings?
Kéré: Representative buildings, large buildings, are built according to Western models, and by the Chinese. The Chinese don’t debate for long, and they always bring development aid for the government. European companies are reluctant, especially where large projects are concerned. They are afraid of supporting undemocratic governments with such projects. That’s why the Chinese can do so much here. Which doesn’t mean that I am a critic of the Chinese. The only thing that’s bad is that these buildings are not built by our own people. Even though we can’t really afford to bring in expensive experts from abroad. And when the work is done, the experts leave again, taking their expertise with them. Africans have to be integrated into such projects so that they can show their children how it’s done, also how these buildings are maintained. Our future won’t come from abroad, not from the government, but only from the African population. That’s why I’m working with local workers, whom I train myself. Even though that takes longer, it is the more sustainable way of going about things.
tip: Would it be possible to built government buildings wit the principles you used in the construction of the school?
Kéré: Why not? You’d also have to find constructive solutions. That would be the right way for Africa. But in the end things won’t go that way, because our politicians want representative buildings, and they think they have to be like the west. It is difficult to turn back such thinking. Those who can afford to, build houses oriented on European architecture: houses with lots of glass – in a country where it is very hot.
tip: In Europe, facades with large windows are considered an ideal way of heating buildings with the aid of the sun.
Kéré: Quite. In Burkina Faso, such houses heat up incredibly, and they need to be cooled with lots of energy. That is simply not appropriate for the region, and that is my criticism. We try to do the opposite. Usually, you won’t prevail with such ideas in Burkina Faso. But I was lucky enough that my people in Gando stood behind me.
tip: People were immediately enthusiastic about your alternative architectural approach in Gando?
Kéré: Not at all. When I said we’ll build the school with mud, people shook their heads and said, ‘have you forgotten that a mud house doesn’t survive a rainy season?’ I was accompanied by German team members, and the people in Gando thought, once they are gone, he’ll see reason. In the end, I was able to convince my people after all.
tip: Did the school stand longer than one rainy season?
Kéré: Yes, much longer. Longer than all these concrete buildings. I don’t go there as this big foreign helper, as the big white man who is sacred. When I make mistakes, people immediately come to me and complain. If the buildings were to collapse after five years, my relatives would be affected.
tip: Your architectural firm is located in the Berlin neighbourhood Kreuzberg, and such a prize as the Aga Khan Award means a great deal of publicity. After receiving the award, did you drown in work, did you receive many new commissions?
Kéré: I wasn’t so lucky. But that didn’t stop me from continuing my work. In continued building, for example a doctors’ school for 120 students that we had to extend two years later. But it took us a long time to find a sponsor. Now we have one; he gives us more than 25,000 euros every year.
tip: How many Africans won the Aga Khan Award before you?
Kéré: I think there was once an Algerian who also won the award. I’m the first from sub-Saharan Africa.
tip: Is the reason for the lack of commissions after you won the prize that you are African and black?
Kéré: Only God knows the answer. But sometimes you get bitter when you realise that you are always seen as exotic, also professionally. That is something about this society that’s difficult to understand. But – there is also Christoph Schlingensief.
tip: So how did you and Christoph Schlingensief get together after all?
Kéré: About eight weeks after my stay in Johannesburg, I was back in touch with Peter Anders. He complained that I hadn’t contacted Christoph. So around Christmas 2008, I called him. He told me that he was in hospital, despairing, that he was very seriously ill, that he had cancer. He spoke and spoke. Of sad things, but with an incredible drive. Unbelievable! Only in between, I heard him cough. During this very first conversation he had won me over. He was so dynamic and simultaneously so down to earth that I realised this thing about the festival theatre wasn’t just a flight of fancy.
tip: So what convinced you in the end about the idea with the opera house/festival theatre?
Kéré: Although Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries on earth, it is also a proud country with proud peoples. What many people don’t know – Burkina Faso is the centre of African film and African theatre. Christoph managed to convince me that an art project which helps to shape or awaken the cultural identity of a group is important for the development of a country. And if I can construct this building with my methods, by integrating local people, using local materials, involving people and their concerns there, then this project is also right for such a poor country.
tip: Did you know Christoph Schlingensief’s work at that point?
Kéré: I knew that there was somebody by that name who calls society’s attention to social ills through his art. But I hadn’t experienced his art myself at that point. I didn’t have time to consume culture. I wanted to build, I wanted to work for my people in Africa. Up to that point, I had lived in Berlin as a driven man. I came to Germany in 1985 with a training stipend, I was supposed to become a development aid worker specialising in working with wood – for a country like Burkina Faso, where there isn’t even any wood! But I didn’t care, I simply took the opportunity to get away from the poverty. After this training, I started taking evening classes. It took four years of studying from 6 pm to 11 pm to get my high school diploma (Abitur). I worked during the days to finance my stay in Germany. I delivered magazines, including tip, delivered them to newsstands in Spandau. After I had finished school, I registered at the university and later worked on the school project in Gando. So there really had been no time to get to know Christoph’s art.
tip: On 5 February construction for the festival theatre will commence. How much of the planned building is by you, and how much by Christoph Schlingensief?
Kéré: Christoph Schlingensief and I have travelled several times together, including to Burkina Faso. He saw my work there. During the many conversations on our travels, I was able to find out pretty well what exactly Christoph wants. He used terms like ‘social sculpture’ or ‘total theatre’. My way of working corresponds to his ideas. Christoph wants this festival theatre idea to have a strong social component: people can come to us, act in the theatre, but also learn how to build a simple solid house. We could use the prototype buildings constructed in this way as dressing rooms for artists or as guest houses for visiting artists. Christoph wants the theatre to grow slowly. And as the architect, you begin to articulate these ideas on paper. And in the end I designed a coiled building, shaped like a snail’s shell.
tip: Mr Schlingensief has a dangerous disease. How will the festival theatre continue should he die from that illness?
Kéré: Christoph is in excellent shape! The metastases have completely receded. He’s gained weight, and he is full of energy. But of course with such a project you also have to think about what will happen if important people aren’t around anymore. It’s after all possible that at some point he won’t feel like going on with this thing in Africa. That is why we have the Festspielhaus GmbH (Festival Theatre Ltd.), a non-profit company which cooperates with the German Federal Culture Foundation and the Goethe-Institut. There are also commitments on the level of state to state, the contracts are being prepared at the moment. But nonetheless, Christoph is of course very important. His energy and his charm are irreplaceable. But at some point the festival theatre will run on its own.
tip: What interests Schlingensief about Africa?
Kéré: Christoph is fascinated by how enthusiastic people in Africa are about culture. For example, when we were on the road and somewhere out there by the street was a TV with maybe an audience of 200 people, children and adults, watching a Kung-Fu film and getting very involved, he always stopped, and we couldn’t get him away. Despite the incredible heat and the noise. And he was really under the weather from his illness at that time.
tip: Mr Schlingensief is fascinated by how people can be enthusiastic about simple cultural pleasures?
Kéré: Yes, Christoph says in Europe theatre lost its meaning. In Europe people are so spoilt, he says, everything has to be perfect and more perfect, even though it is all mostly a repetition of the same. For example, Christoph wants to integrate a film class into this opera village. What he means is that children should be given flipchart cameras, and then receive an explanation how the technology works and how you cut a film. But they don’t get told how films can be cut in terms of content. The children are supposed to make film according to their own intuition. Without being instructed by a European, some professor who thinks s/he knows about these things. The festival theatre could be a podium for bringing together different cultures. But that is only possible as part of a real partnership, because only then is mutual enrichment possible. If you do it this way, then in my opinion, Europeans can go to Africa as much as they want. They should go, build schools, but have them done by the people there, who use them. They can give Africa a push, inspire it, but they must also accept if the end-result is something different from what they expected.
tip: There are a lot of experts from the West who like to tell Africans how things should be done.
Kéré: In the media, Africa is always portrayed as needy, and the blessed progress is to come from the west. Unfortunately, this image is also as firmly planted in the minds of Africans as in Europeans. It gives me all the more joy that I can act differently. I often receive letters from Africans, from students living in Belgium, Finland, or France, who have heard of my school in Gando, and who now also deal with locally adjusted building in their dissertations. Or from people with PhDs who also want to build a school in their home country. They write: ‘We are proud of you.’ That shows that there are lots of people who want change. But it’s so hard. We are in the West, we can’t just leave.
tip: Why can’t you leave?
Kéré: Had I hadn’t come to Europe, I and my work wouldn’t have been discovered in the first place. You and I wouldn’t be talking now. I wouldn’t have had the least influence.
»Europeans can give Africa a push, inspire it, but they must also accept if the end-result is something different than they expected.«(Diébédo Francis Kéré)tip: That means the fate of ambitious people like you is to live as vagabonds? You live in Europe to raise money?
Kéré: … and knowledge. Money and knowledge. We don’t need a lot of money. We only need the means to create simple structures. With these structures, you can give Africans an opportunity to show their talent, as a teacher in a school or a student there, for example.
tip: Do the people who are supposed to build the festival theatre get paid a decent wage?
Kéré: Our project costs are labour costs. For example, I built an award-winning secondary school in Dano in Burkina, for 70,000 euros. That included not just my airfare, but also a salary for 30 Africans for one year. Normally, people would have to emigrate for five or six years to the Ivory Coast or Ghana for that kind of money. Why do so many Africans come to Europe on such dangerous routes? They want to earn something to feed their families. One aim of development aid is to create income.
tip: TU Berlin, where you were a student, is known as a university where many foreigners from so-called developing countries study. They get degrees as engineers or economists. But only rarely do you meet such people on the management floors of our corporations. Where are these people?
Kéré: Maybe some want to return home immediately after getting their degree? But perhaps there aren’t enough high-visibility or management jobs. I myself also know just a few people who managed to get such jobs, and I’m grateful that I got a job as lecturer at TU Berlin. Although it’s just part-time, and without TAs. The university praises me a great deal, my ideas are published in international architecture journals and elsewhere. And the trend has shown that sustainable and adjusted building offers answers to some of our current challenges: climate change, shortage of resources, economic crises. Nonetheless, I sometimes ask myself why others with achievements comparable to mine get so much further in other countries. Nonetheless, this lecturership is amazing for me. In my village, I was the first person allowed to go to school. And now I live in Germany, travel the world, and can call myself a trendsetter. For me, that is what landing on the moon would be for somebody else.
Interview: Eva Apraku
Picture: Anna Blancke
Source: tip Berlin, 28 January 2010
