NPR’s Michel Martin got the newest Pritzker laureate and recently-named Dakar Goethe Institute designer to harken back to his childhood village in Burkina Faso, which he credited as a strong influence beginning with his educational experiences in darkened classrooms that frequently hovered around 100 degrees. 

“Being in the village, you're thinking about big buildings, glass and whatever, far away,” Kéré told NPR. “And so in Burkina, that is it. The focus is the Western. But in my case, it's like you just have, you know, a tradition, which is strong, which has skills, which has some great things that I relate to the environment, to the ecology […] but people don't see it [as if] it has a value. And when we started, it cost me a lot of energy to really convince [them]. But a couple of years ago, people started to see that what I'm doing was the good solution.”

Kéré also spoke to his motivations for continuing to pursue ever more creative projects, oftentimes in opposition to his family’s plea that he take the time to rest at least once in a while.

“I was lucky to grow up in a community where the survival of the entire community depends on the support of each member. If you came from a community like mine, and you remember [while you were a student] all the women collecting their last penny to give to you to support your education. This is energy that people have put in you, and you should use it to grow and to create things that will push other kids to do the same thing. That is what I'm doing.”