Francis Kéré Named 2025 Recipient of the Richard Neutra Award for Professional Excellence
Kéré is the 30th recipient of the Neutra Award, presented annually by Cal Poly Pomona’s Department of Architecture to recognize individuals whose work has shaped the built environment worldwide. Previous honorees include Pritzker Prize winners Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Renzo Piano and Thom Mayne, along with other leading architects and designers who have advanced architecture’s role in how people live, work, and play.
“It is an honor to receive the Richard Neutra Award, named after a personal hero and a giant in the history of modern architecture,” Kéré said. “I am grateful to join a list of great peers and colleagues, thinkers and doers, whose work has been devoted to architecture that uses resources responsibly and respects the environment. Neutra’s ideas have had a big impact on me. He used the word biorealism, what I understand as the duty of architecture to serve both nature and people, which has long been a guiding vision in my own work.”
Kéré first gained international recognition in 2004, when he received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for a primary school he designed in his home village of Gando, Burkina Faso. The project—funded through his own efforts and realized with local residents—set the foundation for his globally recognized practice, which blends community-driven design with sustainable building methods. In 2022, he became the first African architect to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. He is also the inaugural winner of the Murcutt Prize and will join 1998 Neutra Award honoree Glenn Murcutt for a public lecture in Sydney later this year.
“We are thrilled to have Francis here as our Neutra Award recipient this year,” said Robert Alexander, chair of the Department of Architecture. “The breadth and global impact of his firm’s projects and their focus on community-based design is something we believe will inspire both our faculty and the future architects in our department.”
Richard Neutra, one of the most influential architects in the modernist movement, taught at Cal Poly Pomona’s College of Environmental Design until his passing in 1970. The 2,000-square-foot Neutra VDL Studio and Residences in Los Angeles was gifted to the college in 1990 by Neutra’s widow, Dione. Designed by Neutra himself for his family to live in, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.