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Manuel Herz’s Tambacounda Hospital in Senegal is rooted in community
Manuel Herz’s Tambacounda Hospital in Senegal is rooted in community
A brick extension to the Tambacounda hospital in Senegal by Switzerland-based architect Manuel Herz is a true project of collaboration, rooted to the local community
All images courtesy of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa
This new extension to the Tambacounda hospital in Senegal is ostensibly by the Switzerland-based architect Manuel Herz. Yet such is the depth of the building’s roots in the local community – from labour to process to the functions of the building – that it can only really be called a collaboration. That said, the project is a natural continuation of the 52-year-old architect’s career to date.
The maternity and paediatric hospital in Tambacounda, Senegal, designed by Manuel Herz Photo: Iwan Baan. Courtesy of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa
Around three years ago, Nicholas Fox Weber, the director of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, was standing in the paediatric unit of Tambacounda Hospital in Senegal, looking at a broken incubator.
“It was basically a refrigerator tray with a light bulb hanging over it, with three babies squeezed together on it,” he says. “We quickly got a new incubator from Dakar, but then I thought, ‘Why is this necessary in our world with all this privilege? I’m in the art world, a world where people are worrying about which gallery is representing Jeff Koons for however many millions of dollars of art. Why is it necessary to have this pathetic hospital?’”