Pritzker Prize 2022 winner Diébédo Francis Kéré returns to his home country, Burkina Faso, with a recently completed work of high political value: the Mausoleum of Thomas Sankara, the charismatic former president of Burkina Faso and a key figure of Pan-Africanism, as well as a fervent promoter of the values of economic independence and environmental sustainability, education and women's emancipation, who was assassinated in a coup d'état on 15 October 1987 together with twelve of his closest collaborators.

The work is the first piece of the larger Parc Mémorial Thomas Sankara, also designed by Kéré Architecture, initiated by the Comité International pour le Mémorial Thomas Sankara and financed by the government of Burkina Faso: a 14-hectare area which, in addition to the memorial ( acting as a ceremonial centre) will house an amphitheatre, shops, restaurants, cultural spaces and a 100-metre-high tower located on the precise spot of the assassination: from the 87-metre-high terrace of the tower (in memory of the murder year), the gaze will sweep over the city of Ouagadougou and into the future, inspiring new generations to carry on a cultural heritage which has survived violence. 

A sinuous and colourful pavilion accompanies visitors to the entrance of the building: a massive volume made of local laterite and clay with a circular layout, which displays the symbolic eloquence of a work by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux or Étienne-Louis Boullée. On the front, thirteen openings in the masonry evoke the absence of the victims. Inside, a composed, aulic space arranges the thirteen tombs in a radial pattern, each marked by a marble sarcophagus which fades upwards into a tombstone of the same material and which, at the junction with the roof, perforates it, letting in a dramatic, iridescent zenithal light from the skylight.

Thanks to passive design strategies, including the study of natural cross-ventilation flows for cooling, the use of traditional materials with high thermal inertia to guarantee microclimatic comfort in the torrid climate of the Sahel, and the involvement of local craftsmen, the building is a tribute to environmental sustainability and to the construction know-how of the land from which the president's universal values have sprung, but also a place of awareness, interaction and sociality that stands as an ideal connection between memory and hope. As Francis Kéré remarked: “This is the first time I have been asked to take on the responsibility of constructing a building in memory of a great figure. Given that Sankara was killed there, the site remained a place of fear for a long time. It has now been transformed into a space of encounter and recreation that fosters remembrance, respect, and hope. Thomas Sankara played a crucial role in shaping Burkina Faso—even giving our country its name—and his pan-Africanist ideas resonate more deeply today than ever before. Meeting him was a pivotal moment in my early life, and I think many people in Burkina Faso feel a strong connection to Thomas Sankara and his work. The mausoleum will be a space that belongs to the people, presenting an important historic site as a symbol of progress, change, and hope for all”.