One hundred years after Anne and Joseph Albers met, their work, ideas, and financial influence have created an amazing hospital that saved lives in one of the hottest places on earth

Last modified on Thursday, November 11, 2021 04.05 EST

When Anni Albers started weaving in the Bauhaus in the 1920s, she had little idea that her geometric patterns would one day decorate the door of a hospital in rural Senegal. Shadows play on the surface of the interlaced wooden blocks set on the doors of the new obstetric ward in Tambakunda, creating a weaving effect that echoes the pattern of dappled sunlight through the perforated brick walls. These are small details, but they alleviate the suffering here to some extent, and the poetic touch makes the clinical environment feel like a place of care. The Art World Charity Complex operates in a mysterious way. Since Anne and her husband Joseph Albers met at the radical Weimar design school for one hundred years, the construction of a new hospital thousands of miles away has been achieved through the amazing amount of sales of their works now and their fundraising ability. accomplish. Name the command. It is located in one of the hottest places on earth, but its design purpose is to operate without air conditioning. The result is a building that appropriately embodies the German duo’s "minimal means, maximum effect" philosophy. And this happened almost by accident. "Thanks to my dermatologist in Paris," said Nicholas Fox Weber, an energetic American art historian who has managed the Albers Foundation since Joseph's death in 1976. Senegal's hospital. I asked if I could go with him on his next trip. Six weeks later, we arrived in Tambakunda with supplies: a suitcase full of blood and hundreds of toothbrushes. "

Fox Weber was shocked by his discovery. In the maternity ward, he saw an "incubator" composed of trays on the table, three newborns squeezed under the lamp. Hypodermic needles were scattered on the floor, and an operating table could hardly stand on three feet. Women huddled together at different stages of childbirth or just after childbirth, while others waited on bamboo mats on the floor. What he saw led him to found Le Korsa, a non-profit organization funded by the Albers Foundation (the foundation itself is funded mainly through the sale of Albers’ paintings), dedicated to improving health care in eastern Senegal And education. Since 2005, they have built rural clinics, women's shelters, art centers, and the first secular school in strictly Muslim areas, the latter two being designed by Japanese-American architect Toshiko Mori. There is also a plan for a new museum, and the architect will be selected from a shortlist of candidates across Africa. After four years, this 2 million euro (1.7 million pounds) hospital building is their most ambitious project to date. The two-story building winds 125 meters in a serpentine curve and is a surprisingly subtle addition to the hospital complex of the 1970s, creating the largest number of rooms and minimizing the footprint. Instead of adding another donut-shaped building to the circular ward campus, it weaves between them, hugging the former pediatric ward on one side, and then bending the other side to enclose a new playground shaded by mature acacia trees. patio.

“We tried to create a model of the hospital that could be used for future expansion,” said Manuel Herz, the Basel architect behind the design. He had never designed a medical facility before, but he was selected in 2017 because he was the only invited architect who refused to propose a design without first visiting the site to properly understand the environment. His previous research on African modernist architecture also helped break the balance. "It's important to come here to talk to all the people involved and find out what they really need," Hertz said. "Our solution is to make the building as narrow as possible to encourage cross ventilation while creating as much space as possible for hanging out."

The lounging space does not seem to be an urgent requirement of the hospital, but as Hertz discovered during his research trip, being hospitalized in Tambakunda is a very family affair. The campus is full of people, and relatives of patients are cooking, washing clothes or resting on bamboo mats. It looks like a chaotic campsite, with pots and buckets next to stray cats, and newborn babies hiding under mosquito nets under trees. "This is a big problem," said Dr. Thérèse-Aida Ndiaye, who has served as the hospital's director since 2016. "Each patient has four or five family members, and they all have their own habits. I recently found a relative taking a bath here. We are a hospital, not a house." They are out of necessity: there are not enough staff to come. Provides all aspects of patient care, so relatives are needed to clean up the mess, run errands, and buy medicines from nearby pharmacies. Many people have travelled long distances to come here. The Tambakunda Hospital receives approximately 40,000 patients from all over the region each year, including from the borders of Mali, Gambia and Guinea. Their families are often forced to travel together and cannot leave their families behind.

Herz's design includes the inevitable entourage. In addition to the space for 150 beds (three times the previous capacity), there are plenty of social spaces, including a semicircular balcony in the corridor on the first floor, and curved seats overlooking the playground, allowing parents to look after their children. Two spiral staircases descend gracefully into the courtyard, providing another parade route for the more practical steps inside. The playground was the idea of ​​Herz’s wife Xenia, who suggested that there should be laughter in the ward (the couple helped build it with donations from wedding guests). Herz said this is the first and only playground in Tambacounda, a city with a population of nearly 180,000.

The most important lesson of the project is what it lacks: air conditioning. Tambacounda became extremely hot, reaching above 40C (104F) in April, so it is called Tangacounda, which means "hot house" in the local Wolof language. It is located in the middle of a wide and flat savanna, and the air hardly moves. But by using basic climatic design principles—excerpted from Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew's 1956 book "Tropical Buildings in Humid Zones"—patient rooms can be kept cool with only ceiling fans (although the operating room still needs air conditioning).

The first technique is a double vaulted roof, with corrugated metal layers suspended above the concrete below, forming a thermal buffer that helps to draw in air through the holes in the ceiling. The walls are constructed of hollow concrete bricks, allowing air to pass through, while being deep enough to block the interior from direct sunlight. The use of rammed earth was considered, but Herz said that taking into account other logistical challenges, it is safer to use technology familiar to local builders. The 50,000 bricks were made on site using a single mold and dyed red with iron oxide. Echoing the patterned door, the exposed concrete ceiling has a woven texture by gluing bamboo mats to the formwork.

"The important thing is that everything is made locally," Hertz said. "The windows are made in a nearby metal workshop, and all the builders come from here. This means that all the money goes to the area, instead of an international consortium, they will be able to operate and repair everything by themselves." Imported The more high-tech foreign equipment, the greater the possibility of errors-as doctors have discovered, problems with the new operating table and anesthesia equipment have delayed their move into the building. The local production process also allows for further experiments, which can bring unexpected gains. Once, Herz asked to build a model façade on site to test the effects of different sizes of holes in the bricks. Leading the construction process was Dr. Magueye Ba, a doctor who later became a builder, and he oversaw a number of Le Korsa projects.

Ba realized that a local rural school needed a classroom, so instead of simply building a test wall that would be demolished, he built a small building for them, consisting of several compartments in the hospital. It stands proudly on the edge of the village, with its lively roof line jutting out of the grassy savanna, almost doubling the school’s capacity. Since then, Pakistan has used hollow bricks in another kindergarten project, and their unique curvilinear contours have given birth to a new local vernacular. "This is the perfect result," Hertz said. "I can't control it anymore-the design has a life of its own."

For more information about Le Korsa's work, please visit aflk.org.