Across the African continent, but especially in the the sub-Saharan region, the light provided by the sun has a particularly stark quality – a fact that becomes apparent in traditional buildings and in the way sunlight shapes the daily routines of their inhabitants.

With no artificial light, architecture had to make use of sunlight to create a light source within a building, yet at the same time it had to protect the inhabitants of a house from its intensity. The result is a vernacular architecture that works with very few or small openings. They render the inside of a building nearly pitch black while the outside is illuminated by glaring sunshine.

Good to know :

• Author(s): Francis Kéré with photographs by Iwan Baan

• Published in 2021 by Lars Müller Publisher

• 180 pages - Text in English

• Format : 33x24cm

• Paperback