Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré has created plans for the $12 million headquarters of the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation in Kogelo, Kenya—an organization established by the grandmother of President Barack Obama that feeds and educates children and impoverished families.
The campus will primarily serve the 3,600-person village in western Kenya, but will also function as a resource center for the surrounding rural areas.
The first phase of the project, an early childhood development center, will require an estimated $250,000, while the second phase will focus on renovating the Barack Obama Primary and Secondary Schools in Kogelo. Later construction will add a vocational training school and a hospital to the complex.
Attention to social and cultural context, as well as the use of local materials and techniques, is a recurring theme in Kéré’s work. The architect, who grew up in a traditional Burkinabe village and is now based in Berlin, recently completed the Center for Health Care and Social Promotion in Burkina Faso.