Children’s Surgical Hospital, Entebbe (in construction)

Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Type Health Hospital Emergency architecture
Material Earth Rammed earth
Date 2013
City Entebbe
Country Uganda
Photographer Emergency Giorgio Grandi

Emergency’s new Center for Pediatric Surgery in Uganda, south of the city of Kampala, on the north shore of Lake Victoria, is not only a hospital of excellence, but a building that enriches the area in a number of ways. Emergency’s hospitals provide health services but also act as training centers for local doctors and nurses. Having the opportunity to follow courses of higher education at home, doctors and nurses in the region will no longer be forced to go abroad to specialize, often without returning. With the new center of pediatric surgery, they will be able to operate in a hospital of excellence, with equipment comparable to the best medical centers in the West. The building will also serve as an architectural model for the region: a rational building, with 5.000 square meters of photovoltaic panels on its roof (donated by Enel Greenpower) and built with the local pisé (rammed earth) technology.

The hospital is set in woodland sloping gently down towards Lake Victoria. Protected by large horizontal roofs, it is divided into three parallel wings. They flank the central block with the operating rooms and intensive care unit. The focus of the hospital’s spatial layout is the central garden, with a big tree growing there.