Diébédo Francis Kéré smiled with nervous pride as he led a group on a tour of his pavilion at Tippet Rise Art Center, a 12,000-acre ranch, sculpture park, and classical music venue in southern Montana. A strong sun filtered through the structure’s circular canopy of stripped logs that form a rippling honeycomb pattern.

The work is titled Xylem, for the vessels in plants that carry water up from the roots, and its fresh timber fills the air with a calming forest smell. Set along a creek amid aspen and cottonwood trees, it provides a quiet, comfortably scaled refuge in the vast, sage-dotted terrain undulating south toward the Beartooth Mountains.

Kéré has built in his share of far-flung locations. He was born in Gando, a small village in southeastern Burkina Faso. The oldest son of the village chief, he was sent to school in Tenkodogo, the nearest city. He eventually studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin, where his firm is now based. But he completed his first projects back in Gando.

A series of public buildings, including a primary school, they won international acclaim for combining local materials and craft techniques with a global contemporary design language and innovative passive cooling schemes. He has gone on to create works ranging from a national park complex in Mali in 2010 to a pavilion for London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2017 and a pop-up at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival earlier this year.

Kéré describes his work with a combination of technical detail, poetic vision, and charismatic humility. At the opening of Xylem, which coincided with the beginning of Tippet Rise’s summer concert series, he spoke about balancing new projects with those in his home village.

Before you got the Tippet Rise commission, had you been to Montana?

No. When we first came, I was like, “Wow! This exists!” It’s so vast, so monumental.

How did those first impressions influence your design?

For visitors, we wanted to create a space where they could come to listen to a concert, or when they come back from a hike, they could rest and reflect. We made it a circle because we wanted to create a gathering place, and the circle is the best way to communicate and the most democratic way to sit. It was inspired by structures in the rural areas of Burkina Faso, and even up to Mali, called a toguna. A toguna is the gathering space in these places. It’s where you go when you enter a compound. It’s an iconic building, a landmark.

How did you adapt that idea to Montana?

If you look from far away, the form of the canopy relates a little bit to the landscape. You feel embraced, but not totally closed off from the outside world. That was one element. We also wanted to use locally available wood. If we didn’t use it, the wood might have fueled the next fire. It would disappear. So subtly we gave a new life to the wood.

After your father’s death six years ago, you became the head of your village.Is it a challenge to balance the work that you’re doing around the world and back home?

In Burkina it’s about growing the capacity to delegate. There are now about 150 people who have learned our construction techniques from working on other buildings. With some of the projects we’re doing there right now, I don’t need to draw the building completely. I just have a sketch, and my people are able to understand and further develop the idea since they have adapted the techniques.

Is there a commonality running through all your work?

Generosity in terms of space for people. The quality of material is really important to me, and that my work inspires people. Inspiration is so big to me.

Do you have a dream project?

I have no dream project. My dream clients are open to new ideas. They are visionary. They are challenging me, and they just give me a chance to create, no matter where it is, no matter the size or what it is. So, in the end, if this can be achieved in terms of serving people—whether it’s housing, a museum, a school, a university—then I’m more than happy.