Usually representing spirits, ancestors or the primordial couple, these figures were placed in shrines and treated with great respect. Through a wide range of style, scale, belief and function the couples depicted share a timeless, serene equality necessary to the continuity of their societies.

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Manuel Herz wins Tambacounda Hospital Project in Senegal

Tambacounda Hospital is the only hospital in a large region of eastern Senegal. It serves the 100,000 inhabitants of the city of Tambacounda - declared the hottest metropolis on the planet - and more than a million people from the surrounding region and Mali, whose border is about an hour and a half away.

Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital / Sheppard Robson + John Cooper Architecture + GAPP + Ruben Reddy Architects

The Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital in Johannesburg is the first purpose built paediatric hospital in South Africa. The commission for the hospital, provided by the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund was won by John Cooper Architecture with Sheppard Robson, in an international competition. The design is one of four dedicated children’s hospitals on the African continent, creating a much needed f...

General Hospital of Niger / CITIC Architectural Design Institute (CADI)

Mine is a love affair for hospitals, the intricate network of life saving corridors, the healing gardens, the mini nursing stations within inpatient departments and macro doctor’s plazas in outpatient, the entire experience weaves and interworks into one giant life-saving machine. And the General Hospital of Niger is this and then some, an ode to the principals of Florence Nightingale compacted...

Ghana Ridge Hospital / Perkins + Will

Global architectural and design firm Perkins+Will adds to its award-winning healthcare portfolio with the design of the new 465,560 square foot (43,252 square meter) Ghana Ridge Hospital. The Government of Ghana selected the design-build team of Perkins+Will and Americaribe to create a new state-of-the-art hospital that will support the growing needs of the fast developing African country. This...

Kasungu Maternity Waiting Village / Mass Design Group

Malawi suffers from one of the highest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world: in 2010, one in thirty-six Malawian women had a lifetime risk of dying during pregnancy or delivery. Over 85% of the country’s population lives in rural settings, with little access to professional medical care. As part of an effort to address this, the Presidential Initiative on Maternal Health and Safe...

Nyala Emergency NGO Paediatric Clinic / TAMassociati

Sustainability stands for simplicity. This statement links last tamassociati research in building practise. Sustainability deals directly to three contemporary issues for our societies: effective politics, responsible design, appropriate technologies. Tamassociati had focused its work on a creative interaction among these three aspects: politics, design, technology; trying to find innovative so...

Kaedi Regional Hospital / Association Pour Le Développement D'une Architecture Et D'un Urbanisme Africains

The Kaedi hospital comprises of a 120 bed extension to a regional hospital in the frontier town of Kaedi serving the remote population of Gorgol province in Southern Mauritania. The architects were not to replicate the earlier hospital's conventional concrete-frame buildings; their brief was to house the planned facilities by developing new low-cost techniques of construction employing local ma...

Konokono Vaccination and Educational Clinic / Selgas Cano and MIT Open Studio Students

Turkana, for anyone who has had the priviledge of travelling there, is a hot and dusty environment, one that among others provides the kind of environment necessary for expansive views, open air movement and natural hard wearing materials. It is with this mindset that Architect José Selgas, of the Spanish firm SelgasCano, worked on the design of a vaccination and educational center for the noma...

Rwinkwavu Neonatal Intensive Care Unit / Mass Design Group

The Rwinkwavu neonatal care unit by Mass design group seeks to answer the age old question. Can Architecture improve maternal and child health? The answer is simply not that straight forward and the project simply seeks to entrench within it an ideology of care beyond the pencil and the drawing board into the corridors of healthcare. It is a endeavour that Alan Ricks explains as "Simple constru...

Butaro Hospital/ MASS Design Group

In January 2011, the Rwandan Ministry of Health and Partners In Health (PIH) opened the 140-bed Butaro Hospital in the Burera District of Rwanda. Burera District, which has a population of over 340,000, has historically had very poor health indicators compared to other areas of Rwanda and is one of the most impoverished districts in the country. Prior to PIH’s arrival in 2007, Burera was one of...

Libyan European Hospital /Carlo Berarducci Architecture

In a spectacular location on the beautiful Libyan coast not far from the ruins of the archaeological site of the roman city of Sabratha, along the coastal road linking Tripoli toTunis, the Libyan European hospital surgical clinic with conference center is under construction. The project commissioned by swiss and libyan private clients has been interrupted in the realization after the events of ...

Aga Khan Hospital MRI Radiology and Physiotherapy Unit/ Tharani Associates

Healthcare architecture has taken a paradigm shift towards ensuring that patient-care and staff comfort are of paramount and equal importance within the hospital environment. The extension to the Aga Khan Hospital facilities with the additional of the Aga Khan Hospital MRI Radiology and Physiotherapy Unit by Tharani Associates lends itself to this architectural school of thought and further s...

Mama Sarah Foundation School/Kere Architecture

Mama Sarah Obama’s vision is to create a “cycle of life” that encompasses an early childhood education centre, a primary and secondary school, a medical centre and a vocational training centre.

Anidan Clinic/ Urko Sanchez Architects

There are some projects that are small but great in design, and then there are those project that are small, great designs and most importantly of greater positive impact to the community they serve. The Anidan Paediatric Clinic is one such project. Built in the outskirt of Lamu where medical facilities were barely available the project served over 50,000 children in just two years of its running.