In the pink

A healthy dose of collaboration helps a hospital extension in rural Senegal get into shape

- JONATHAN BELL

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. After studying in Aachen and London, Herz taught widely, including spells at the Bartlett and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Now assistant professor of architectural and urban design at the University of Basel, he continues to combine practice with research, working between Basel and Cologne. Recent projects include a series of in-depth studies on refugee camps, and on the influence of modernism on Africa’s newly independent countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Through his deep familiarity with Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Zambia and Senegal, he came to the attention of the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, an NGO set up in 2005 by the foundation’s director, Nicholas Fox Weber, to improve access to culture, education and health in rural Senegal.