Like many metropolitan areas in the West, Tucson has its share of generic strip malls and sprawling subdivisions.

The massive, 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Haiti one year ago, on January 12, killed an estimated 230,000 people and left more than 1.5 million homeless.

In 2001, while still a student at Dano, Burkina Faso the Berlin Technical University, Diébédo Francis Kéré completed his first project: a small primary school in Gando, his native village in Burkina Faso.

Each year, countless migrant laborers travel from Mexico, Honduras, Haiti and other economically challenged countries to rural areas in the Southeastern U.S. to harvest fruits and vegetables, often with children in tow.

Photo © David Heerde Diébédo Francis Kéré’s story is remarkable: He grew up in poverty-stricken Burkina Faso, won a scholarship to study carpentry in Germany, and went on to earn an architecture degree from the Berlin Technical University. While still a student, he built his first project: a school in Gando, his native village, which received a 2004 Aga Khan Award and starred in the recent MoMA exhibition Small Scale, Big Change. Today, Kéré lives in Berlin but remains focused on designing (and raising money for) sustainable buildings in Africa. His work isn’t going unnoticed. In addition to receiving the

Below is a roundup of news stories featured in the December 2010 print edition of RECORD.

The five winners of the prestigious 2010 Aga Khan Award for Architecture will be announced today at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar.