
January 02, 2015
Driving on the rugged roads of Northern Greece in our valiant Simca Aronde, we stumbled upon a couple of quaint surprises — enormous piles of watermelons, for instance.
Driving on the rugged roads of Northern Greece in our valiant Simca Aronde, we stumbled upon a couple of quaint surprises — enormous piles of watermelons, for instance.
Concrete and glass are often thought of as the only building materials of modern architecture. But Francis Diébédo Kéré, the first African winner of a prestigious Pritzker architecture prize, works with clay, whose sustainability is not the only benefit.
Francis Diébédo Kéré extended the primary school in the village of Gando, Burkina Faso
"Clay is fascinating. It has this unique grain and is both beautiful and soft. It soothes; it contributes to well-being..."
Francis Diébédo Kéré, the first African to be awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize last March, is paying tribute to clay. It's a material that he adores, which has too often been shunned and attributed to modest constructions and peasant houses. Diébédo Kéré has always wanted to celebrate "earthen architecture”: buildings made out of clay. It's a technique that has been used for at least 10,000 years, which draws on this telluric element, known as dried mud, beaten earth, rammed earth, cob or adobe.
While seemingly simple, "clay is one of the cornerstones of architectural practice," the Pritzker Prize committee says. "Poor, often forgotten or neglected, these techniques that use clay provide a narrative in which architecture becomes an enduring source of happiness and joy," the jury adds.
By naming Diébédo Kéré as this year’s laureate, the jury is not only recognizing a heritage, but above all, the unique journey of a man "of the earth.” The architect began building for his native village, Gando, in Burkina Faso: from clay, he built housing for teachers, a library, a women's center, a high school, and a workshop for training in construction techniques.
Elsewhere in Burkina Faso, but also in Mali, Togo, Sudan, Kenya, Mozambique and Benin, he developed other projects: all of them reflect the same ethic, that of working to increase the well-being of communities by combining technical knowledge, acquired in Germany, sustainable resources and local traditions.
"I wanted to enrich, to donate to the African continent, so I started with my own community," he recalled.
It's all about chemistry: earth and water are transformed by fire or the sun into a highly sustainable resource. From a basic element like mud, we get an eternal material produced by humans. UNESCO's website points out that one third of humankind lives in such housing.
Its cultural importance throughout the world is evident and has led to its consideration as a common heritage of humankind, therefore deserving protection and conservation by the international community. In 2011, over 10% of the World Heritage properties incorporate earthen structures. The availability and economic quality of the material mean it bears great potential to contribute to poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
These techniques, many thousands of years old, have outlasted others.
This brings to mind the Tower of Babel – the Old Testament tells of its brick-built construction – but also the first cities like Uruk, in Mesopotamia, founded 6,000 years ago, the Baths of Caracalla in Rome or the Great Wall of China. Later, mud was used to build the old walled city of Shibam,in Yemen, given the nickname "the Manhattan of the desert" or the Great Mosque of Djenne, in Mali, made out of clay.
This architecture, mainly associated with underdeveloped countries, was widespread throughout urban and rural Europe, until the 20th century: among the French rural housing built before 1914, and still standing, 15% are made from this material. Palaces, fortifications, entire cities, mosques, cultural landscapes and archeological sites constructed in raw clay are still standing nowadays.
“People reject clay because it is perceived as poor. I had to fight against these preconceptions, to make people accept that it can contribute to our growing needs in terms of housing and buildings," says Diébédo Kéré. "Clay is perfectly well adapted, just as reliable as other expensive materials. Earth has the same durability as concrete: it does not crack, although constantly in the sun, and resists the harsh weather conditions as well as the rain. Demand is there."
He shares a local anecdote: fortified with natural and vegetable extracts, the earthen walls are built without any chemical products. According to custom, if the gecko (lizard) does not enter the house, then it is not a good house.
Although it is no longer fully appreciated, earthen architecture, including brick, has all the qualities needed: aesthetic, economic, structural and environmental. "There is a form of honesty in brick: it fits in the hand. If granite, stone or concrete are austere and imposing, brick is modest, inclusive, accessible," says William Hall, author of the book Brick published by Phaidon. Louis Kahn, one of the great architects of the 20th century, said that brick "knows and can do everything." He used it to build a series of colossal arches for the National Assembly Building of Bangladesh (1982).
It is also the material chosen by Anglo-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare for his latest project in the village of Ikise, two hours from Lagos: an artists' residence built in collaboration with local agency MOE + Art Architecture. The building is made of 40,000 handmade bricks from laterite, a naturally red clay abundant in the region.
"This technique does not require any firing and is environmentally friendly as it does not emit any CO2. It also allows for natural insulation of the building: cool inside when it is hot outside, and vice versa, the porous earth regulates the temperature, which remains constant," chief architect Papa Omotayo says.
Today, clay connects the past, present and future. It continues to inspire several renowned architects like China’s Wang Shu, 2012 Pritzker Prize laureate, who redesigned the contemporary museum in Ningbo by reusing old Shanghai gray-bricks, with other recycled materials.
This is also the case of Italian architect Mario Cucinella, who is now pushing the limits of 3D prototyping with Tecla, a "3D-printed" residential building made out of clay. Combining essential materials and new technologies suggests a sustainable, global response to the climate emergency.
“Besides being suitable for contemporary use, clay bears important societal issues. The strength of these construction models is their replicability: everyone can participate, especially women, often experts in the field. This is a real virtuous economic system that also makes people proud," Diébédo Kéré says.
After using brick, the architect is now exploring new techniques: he mentions a contemporary form of adobe, a mixture of clay and gravel making it possible to mold a house in one piece. He continues to fight so that concrete and glass are not perceived as the only materials that bring modernity and salvation: "What the West imposes on Africa is not adapted to our climate, it requires imports and destroys thousand-year-old traditional techniques. Today, clay must reconnect with the sense of history and triumph again!”
Concrete and glass are often thought of as the only building materials of modern architecture. But Francis Diébédo Kéré, the first African winner of a prestigious Pritzker architecture prize, works with clay, whose sustainability is not the only benefit.
Pro-life activists celebrated the end of the U.S. right to abortion, hoping it will trigger a new debate on a topic that in some places had largely been settled: in favor a woman’s right to choose. But it could also boomerang.
Police raided a gay sauna. The police's actions — and the following media storm – were violent in more ways than one.
As NATO leaders meet in Madrid, Finland and Sweden look much closer to joining the alliance after Turkey dropped its objections to their membership. It's yet another momentous change underway since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.