This past February, temperatures climbed to 105 degrees in Fass, Senegal, some ten hours by car and canoe from Dakar. But it was 15 degrees cooler inside the village’s new elementary school, designed by Toshiko Mori Architect for the nonprofit Le Korsa. Students celebrating its opening flocked to the circular structure, whose thatched roofs, courtyard, and mud-brick walls helped cool the sub-Saharan air.

“It is a wonderful building, an extraordinary building,” says Nicholas Fox Weber, founder of Le Korsa and executive director of its parent organization, the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation. “It’s a breakthrough.” Plans for the school emerged over years, as Weber met with local religious leaders to discuss expanding education beyond traditional Koranic studies. As a result, some 200 students in a historically illiterate pocket of the world are now learning to read and write in Pulaar and French, while gaining skills like carpentry and cooking.

Composed of three buildings—one for coed classrooms, the others for restrooms and teacher housing—the complex references vernacular multi­family dwellings. To construct it, Mori and Weber relied on the same artisans with whom they had worked on Thread, a Senegalese artist residency. Funding, meanwhile, was provided by Le Korsa supporters Laurel Hixon and Michael Keane, a couple who became aware of the cause and asked guests at their 2016 wedding to donate to it. Plans are now under way for more schools. Says Weber, “People are learning. This is just the beginning.” aflk.org