Momentum of Light – Iwan Baan, Francis Kéré

On the initiative of the lighting company Zumtobel Group, architectural photographer Iwan Baan and architect Francis Kéré set out to capture how the sun’s natural light cycle shapes vernacular architecture in Burkina Faso. Across the African continent, 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 an 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. Iwan Baan’s pictures are accompanied by architectural sketches from Francis Kéré, who grew up in this light environment and whose architecture is inspired by it. The design of the annual report picks up on the theme of contrasts and implements it in the structure and materiality as well as in the choice of print. The outdoor and daylight shots are printed on white glossy pages that reflect the light. In contrast, the dark indoor and night shots were produced using a special printing process that has ‘put light to paper’ by applying silver, white and CMY ink to black paper.