IT’S BEEN NEARLY TWO DECADES since Diébédo Francis Kéré designed his first piece of architecture: a clay-brick primary school in his home village of Gando, Burkina Faso, constructed by residents. This past spring, the Berlin-based architect produced a soaring suite of temporary pavilions at Coachella, the desert music festival that attracts influencers and their followers with a gravitational force.

Comparing these buildings, one notes that oppositions quickly stack up: third world versus first, local versus global, necessity versus luxury. The distance between these projects—geographic, temporal, economic—raises questions old and new about architecture’s ability to authentically operate as a modest response to a set of distinct requirements, particularly while functioning under the experience economy’s demands, with its effervescent cocktail of spectacle and capital.

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