• Goderich Surgical Center / TAMassociati

Architects: TAMassociati  
Location: Goderich, Freetown,  Sierra Leone
Project Team: studio tamassociati, emergency logistic office, climosfera srl (mechanical/services engineering), ingeco srl (structural engineering)
Project Year: 2011
Photographer: Massimo Grimaldi
Website: www.tamassociati.org

It is a universal belief that architecture can be practiced everywhere. Good Architecture. We look at a hospital in Goderich, an elemental aspect of health and dignity infused within a 10 year old existing architectural scope, and the result is not only a contemporary look at cost efficiency and primeval distinction, but also a though provoking piece that goes to show just how much the tiniest effort can go a long way in sustainable community development.

TAMAssociati collaborated with Emergency, a medical company to enhance this  ten-year old ‘surgical center’  that has now become a talking spot of  Freetown. Initially set to serve patients and victims of the brutal civil war, the hospital soon expanded into community service catering to almost half a million people.  It was an endeavor geared towards perhaps combating child mortality first.

The surgical unit is a solitary building that rises in the middle of the complex, perhaps to denote its significance within the complex. The restructuring concerned the emergency room, the wards, pharmacy, clinics and pediatrics which carefully extended off the main building whilst looking at aspects of community culture, sustainable energy use and spatial acuity. The expansion into the unit included the construction of the new surgical block, consisting of 3 operating rooms, sterilization, laundry, guest house.

Perhaps visibly dominant are the v-shaped braces extending from the walls as the branches of a tree to support the overhanging roof, aspects of West African traditional architecture simply infused into the complex and windows punched in an irregular pattern of distinguished geometries respond to the spatial program inside and break the facades into remarkable facades.

  • 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 o...

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SELECTED WORKS

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIRECTORY