FRANCIS KÉRÉ THE ARCHITECT WHO BUILT DIGNITY FIRST When Architecture Returned to the Village By  Arindam Bose ⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡ ⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡ Introduction: Architecture Begins Where Comfort Ends Some architects design skylines. Some design institutions. Francis Kéré designs beginnings. In a profession obsessed with novelty, spectacle, and permanence, Kéré chose heat, dust, scarcity, and participation. He chose classrooms without electricity, villages without infrastructure, and communities that architecture had forgotten how to listen to. When the world celebrated glass towers and parametric excess , Kéré asked a quieter question: What does a building owe the people who sit inside it? The answer would redefine contemporary architecture. The Origin: From Gando to Berlin—and Back Again Diébédo Francis Kéré was born in 1965 in Gando, a small village in Burkina Faso , one of the world’s poorest nations. There was no school in his village. At the age of...

                   KENGO KUMA THE ARCHITECT OF DISAPPEARANCE The Master of Materiality Who Erased the Built Object By Arindam Bose ⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡⬡ Introduction: The Anti-Concrete Manifesto While others build monuments to stand out, Kuma builds structures to vanish. 20th-century architecture was an era of concrete and assertion; Kuma's 21st century is one of wood, humility, and breath. He is not designing buildings; he is designing relationships between humanity and the environment. Some architects impose. Some architects announce. Kengo Kuma whispers—and the world leans in to listen. The Philosophy: "Anti-Object" and the Architecture of Defeat 1. "Anti-Object": Dissolving the Boundary Kuma's foundational critique: Buildings shouldn't be isolated "objects" but rather participants in their landscape . He advocates for " Negative Architecture ": a state where the building dissolves into its surroundings....

  Shigeru Ban: The architect who tore helplessness into building By Arindam Bose

  Liu Jiakun: The Radical Pragmatist Who Rewrote Chinese Architecture By Arindam Bose China’s Quiet Revolution in Architecture The early 2000s were a turbulent, electric moment in China ’s architectural landscape. After two decades of explosive urbanization—cities rising overnight, skylines rewritten every month—China reached an inflection point. The era of quantity was beginning to give way to the era of quality . Something fundamental changed. Suddenly, the conversation wasn’t about “how fast can we build,” but “how responsibly can we build?” Urban design matured as a discipline. Sustainability moved from theory to mandate. National projects like Beijing’s Olympic Park and the Grand Theatre redefined scale. Pilot experiments—like mining-restoration landscapes at the Garden Expo—became testbeds for future ecological cities. And a new generation of architects emerged who refused spectacle and embraced meaning. In this tectonic shift stood Liu Jiakun —quiet, stubborn, radicall...