001 / 007
Weaving Care and Designing for Perseverance

Contextualization:
Acknowledging the importance of oral culture and how the connection to community allows us to offer proper “lived-in” research. This exploratory introduction article is written in the context of a North American space of research, lacking proper accessibility to the first hand testimonies of the communities who experienced the environment and actual practices of construction and design for this architectural project. This article will never fully reflect the context and environmental oral re-telling that would allow for proper documentation at this time. It is solely in the context of analyzing the intention behind design choices and how they aim to serve others in conceptual planning.

Good design reflects and great design heals. The corporeality we navigate is constructed and conjured by the ways we interact with it. Objects, habitats, urban collective spaces, all play a part in our communal human experience and interactions. Through that lens, environmental design of spaces are designs that can be ergonomic and caring of the people they protect and serve. The Maternity and Paediatric Hospital in Tambacounda, Senegal designed by Architect Manuel Herz, reflects that ethos. The hospital was commissioned by Le Korsa, a non-profit organisation funded by the Albers Foundation, and engineered by Dr. Magueye Ba. It is one of the only hospitals in the eastern Senegalese region serving the 100,000 inhabitants of the city of Tambacounda. Completed in Spring 2021, it is a two-storey curvilinear building and combines the paediatrics and maternity clinics in one.

According to the Manuel Herz firm, architects and designers conducted thorough research of the environment, people and daily conditions of life before setting to designing this project. Dedicated to sourcing materials locally and working with the community to have a better understanding of the needs their final structure would have to cater to. Experiencing the city first hand, they realized some of the limitations they might be facing in terms of infrastructural support and researched alternative ways to create those conditions.

An example of that thoughtful reflection resides in their comprehension that the hospital regularly lacked staff due to the current resources in terms of housing in Tambacounda. Doctors had to often travel back to Dakar after a few months to see loved ones and visit family members. To remedy that, it was imperative to make sure to include staff housing as part of the infrastructure. The hospital is a resource for a wide community of people. Despite being located in the Senegalese region, it remains a support for multiple other people across the border. Serving 40,000 people annually, some coming from other countries like Mali, The Gambia and Guinea. As a result, many family members of patients are often on the ground as support to the staff who cannot always cater to everyone's needs at the same time. People will often travel in groups of 4 or 5 and house themselves in the same environment as a way to not leave anyone behind and be present through the care of their loved ones. In that regard, the construction of the new edifice had to also embrace the entourage to be functional. It materializes in the form of more social spaces for others to exist, more beds than the previous edifice, semicircular balconies, a courtyard and playgrounds.

Another instance where we can observe how environment and resources led the path for design choices, would be in the shape of the bricks constructing the terracotta facade. Allowing air flow as well as referencing Anni Albers’s weaving works and patterns. Anni Albers weaving created a tapestry of emotions. Heavily inspired and taught by Peruvian indigenous weaving practices, able to blur the lines between unconventional materials and techniques, turning them into fine arts. The spirit of her innovation in materiality and pattern interlacing, mirroring the Bauhaus school of teachings, can be felt through the design process of the maternity. Transformation and practices rooted in creating something new while supporting and using what is already present, showing how it can be made anew. The very shape of the hospital can attest to the spirit of transformation and weaving of a new story. “Rather than adding another doughnut shaped building to the campus of circular wards, it weaves between them instead”.

With time and understanding of human needs and the forms that can embrace resilience, we come to the realization that the push for design and innovation must now and always centre the human experience and the care we must demonstrate to keep each other alive. Architecture that heals is architecture that is thoughtful and anticipating of the needs of the beings who exist in it. It does not exist within the limitations of our imaginations and perception of beauty. History has shown that we summon what is sustainably beautiful when we center our capacity for sensibility. It teaches us that by mirroring our material practices to our physical care, we manage to understand how survival and collective connection is rooted in the things we decide to create.

The objects or spaces we create as a collective reflect the things we allow ourselves to become or the care conjured for ourselves and others. Through practices that are rooted in the emotional, physical and mental wellbeing of people, we give ourselves the means to make those things a priority and a reality. Leading to the understanding that many more things are possible and the reframing of our collective imaginary and future are not as dire as they seem to be. Good design, architectural, industrial, or urban are tools and pillars to our future. “The craftsman, the de-signer of old, usually did not find his raw material ready-made, waiting to be put to use by him; he had to prepare it himself.” - Anni Albers : selected writings on design.

We can see at the core of this earth-woven piece, a story of resilience. Assertiveness in supporting the very root of humanity in the materialization of a maternity and pediatric unit. The work is laborious, but labours of love and care require us to be supple. Resistance and resilience is elastic, pliable, flexible. It requires us to start over, knowing novel things, a better understanding of the journey and the true price of knowledge. Which is that there is a ritualistic aspect to practice and value in repetition. The work is never truly lost and the care we pour into things will come out one way or another.

Human design exists within the many folds of our hands and in the belief that as long as there is intention and care to see our drive materialized, we will find the will and means to do so. By believing that the main component of the shaping of our collective reality is through the courage to act. For ourselves and consequently for others.

“The creation of self, must not be self-centred; it has to take place against the backdrop of a social horizon of meaning that gives the act of self-creation a relevance that transcends the self: Only if I exist in a world in which history, or the demands of nature, or the needs of my fellow human beings, or the duties of citizenship, or the call of God, or something else of this order matters crucially, can I define an identity for myself that is not trivial.” Han, B.-C., The disappearance of rituals.

Bibliography
Albers, A., & Danilowitz, B. (2000). Anni Albers : selected writings on design. University Press of New England.

Somé, M. P. (1993). Ritual : power, healing, and community. Penguin Compass.

Han, B.-C., & Han, B.-C. (2020). The disappearance of rituals : a topology of the present (D. Steuer, Tran.). Polity Press.

Oliver Wainwright, (2021). Bauhaus in Africa: the hospital in sweltering Senegal inspired – and funded – by the Albers. The Guardian.

Manuel Herz Architects, (2021). Maternity and Pediatric Hospital Tambacounda, Senegal.

Olivier Reneau, (2021).Architecture : L’esprit du Bauhaus infuse à l’hôpital de Tambacounda (Sénégal).IDEAT.

Return to List of Works

IYEKETI MA