A small brick hospital in rural Bangladesh with its personal zigzagging canal has been named the perfect new constructing on this planet, profitable the RIBA worldwide prize 2021. A mannequin of climate-conscious design constructed with the naked minimal of sources, the Friendship hospital beat off competitors from a gallery in Berlin by David Chipperfield, and a cycle and footbridge in Denmark by Wilkinson Eyre.
Positioned in Satkhira, within the waterlogged panorama of the Bengal in south-western Bangladesh, the winner of the Royal Institute of British Architects’ award used water as its chief start line. The canal zigzags its method by the location, accumulating invaluable rainwater and serving to to chill the encircling courtyards through the sweltering summer season months. It additionally serves as a barrier between the inpatient and outpatient departments, separating the 2 sides of the location throughout shared courtyards, with out the necessity for a dividing wall.
“There may be water all over the place right here,” says architect Kashef Chowdhury, director of Urbana, the Dhaka-based apply behind the undertaking. “However it’s not at all times the helpful type.” Rising sea ranges attributable to the local weather disaster have meant that the encircling panorama of grain fields has been reworked into shrimp fisheries, whereas the groundwater has turn into too saline to make use of for many functions.
Within the wet season, locals do every part they'll to gather and retailer each final drop of recent water. Chowdhury has subsequently designed the constructing to be a machine for rainwater harvesting, with each roof and courtyard floor draining into the central canal, which runs into two storage tanks at both finish of the location.
It's the first “land hospital” for the NGO Friendship, for which Chowdhury has helped to transform a number of boats into floating hospitals prior to now, designed to serve distant communities within the delta area. Constructed for a good funds of just below $2m, their first everlasting constructing offers a medical lifeline for hundreds of individuals in an space that was closely affected by a serious cyclone in 2007.
Utilizing domestically made bricks, Chowdhury has developed a campus that has the sensation of a village, with buildings set at angles round courtyards, framed with colonnades that assist to shade the wards inside. These deep out of doors corridors additionally present shelter from driving rain and encourage cross air flow by the buildings, whereas bouncing daylight again inside, so no synthetic mild is required through the day.
The blocks are angled to reap the benefits of the prevailing wind course, that means that almost all areas don’t want air-con both, besides the working theatres and supply rooms. A brick water tower stands as a type of campanile, offering a civic focus on the centre of the advanced, whereas each ward overlooks a courtyard, and an extended service hall has been cleverly tucked alongside one facet of the location, liberating the central route for sufferers and medical employees, and permitting clear views out from sufferers’ beds.
“When any individual is in poor health or wants care,” says Chowdhury, “one of the vital issues is the psychological side of it, not simply the bodily care. I believe the type of areas you inhabit throughout remedy – with a view of water and bushes, the sounds of birds, the texture of a breeze – goes a great distance in the direction of therapeutic.”
Odile Decq, chair of the RIBA jury, stated the undertaking “embodies an structure of humanity and safety,” including that it's “related to crucial international challenges, reminiscent of unequal entry to healthcare and the crushing impression of local weather breakdown on susceptible communities.”
The biennial prize – delayed a yr by the Covid-19 pandemic – celebrates initiatives from around the globe that exhibit design excellence and social impression. It has beforehand been awarded to a distant Brazilian college fabricated from wooden and a concrete cliff-like college constructing in Lima, Peru.
The prize marks an vital second for structure in Bangladesh, following the latest award of the Soane medal to Marina Tabassum, Chowdhury’s former companion, who has been creating low-cost houses for landless communities within the nation’s flood-prone coastal areas. Each architects’ work presents vital classes for the worldwide north in learn how to do extra with much less.
On receipt of the prize, Chowdhury stated: “I'm inspired that this will likely encourage extra of us to decide to an structure of care each for humanity and for nature, to rise collectively to the urgencies that we face right this moment on a planetary scale.”
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