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A little known law that requires all newly built museums in Italy to allocate a percentage of their budget to a public sculpture led to the construction of a remarkable building in Port Sudan two years ago. Visual artist Massimo Grimaldi entered a sculpture competition for the newly built National Museum of the 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome with a novel concept. In a break from tradition, he suggested that the prize money be used to build a clinic in Sudan and its progress screened onto the exterior walls of the museum. Equal to two per cent of the museum’s budget, this humanist gesture would constitute as its public sculpture. Grimaldi won the prize and duly donated the proceeds to Emergency, an Italian NGO who built and now run the remarkable Port Sudan Pediatric Centre.
The 18-bed medical facility has all the amenities needed to cater for the city’s rapidly expanding population. There are three outpatient clinics, hospitalisation and sub-intensive care wards, a dispensary, service areas and most importantly professional staff, modern equipment and spotlessly clean rooms. As the first free pediatric clinic in Africa, the hospital has been a lifeline for some of the continent’s most underprivileged mothers and their children. Many of the patients here are recent arrivals to a nearby refugee camp, victims of debt, drought and war now living on a desperate equilibrium between life and death. The clinic they use is as good as any that can be found elsewhere in the continent and at the very least offers their children a better chance of life.
Raul Pantaleo, the architect and one of the board members of Emergency and partner in Tamassociati, explains: ‘During the war, a lot of refugees moved to Port Sudan so right now the city is in the middle of nowhere and rapidly expanding. The clinic is based in a huge area of poor people and it’s the only medical facility for children available to them.’ He explains that the clinic, like others built by Emergency, are designed to meet Italy’s own standards of construction and medical requirements, which ensures world class treatment for all its users. ‘The principle is that we design a hospital exactly as we would do in Italy,’ he says.
Pantaleo explains that the design of Port Sudan Pediatric Centre is a concoction of traditional Sudanese architecture and his own take on the users’ needs. ‘The idea of the design was similar to the workings of traditional Arabic houses,’ he says. ‘There is a fence around the hospital, like that of many Arabic homes, and small windows. So it all fits with the traditional idea of a sort of inside building.’ The outer walls cast a shade over patients waiting between consultations on the hospital’s grass lawns. Screened away from the smoky, dusty brown streets of Port Sudan there is a sense of escape from the intense equatorial sun, at this eden of hope, growth and revitalisation. Gardens have also established a communal space for the neighbouring refugees to enjoy, something Emergency manages to work into most of their projects.
‘Gardens are not a marginal part of our designs, they are somehow the centre of our projects. We want in two years for there to be a real garden and real trees. What makes the building friendly is the garden; it’s somewhere that makes them feel comfortable. They can sit down and the kids love to walk on the grass. It’s like a playground for them.’ It is not just children who take advantage of the space: ‘It has become something of a meeting point for the whole community as it’s the only place where there are shadows and water in the daytime and light in the nighttime.’
Port Sudan Pediatric Centre occupies an area close to the ancient city of Suakin and its aesthetics found their way into many visual aspects of the structure. ‘It was completely built with coral stone. Nowadays, everyone in Port Sudan is using concrete bricks but before building we decided to use traditional coral stone and brick for the façade,’ says the architect. Environmental damage that could be wreaked from quarrying coral stones were countered by using disused stones that can be found scattered across the city. It has helped the building reach the agreement between modernity and tradition in its design. The white walls and contemporary take on sleek Roman-style pillars somehow seem compatible with Port Sudan’s cityscape and will likely endure for future generations.
‘The façade is a sort of sketch of traditional architecture in the area,’ says Pantaleo. ‘It’s not possible to cut coral stone anymore, for environmental reasons, but there is a lot of stone around the city because nobody uses this material anymore. It was also very difficult to find someone skilled in cutting coral stone, so we had to make a workshop to teach the people to cut the stone correctly.’
To counter the climatic extremities of Sudan, Pantaleo turned to traditional ways of cooling and as with all Emergency projects, local advice and skills were central to the successful outcome of the project. ‘There are fantastic people in Port Sudan called the Beja, who are desert people and are one of the biggest populations in the region,’ he says. ‘We had technicians come in for the building who worked there permanently with local people. We only used a special technician for finishing, like tiles, but all the rest was built by the local community.’ Wherever possible, the design was approached with sustainability in mind, from gardens irrigated using recycled waste water to the modernist twist of the region’s famous wind towers, once fixtures of Port Sudan’s wealthier homes. ‘This lets air into the basement and refreshes the whole building with cool air, which cuts down on electricity,’ the architect explains.
Walls follow a traditional concept for cooling from Turkey, one of the many occupiers of this coastal region of East Africa, with grill skins adjoined to the building that ensure ventilation from fresh, natural and cool air. ‘Our buildings are quite simple, but they are still very rooted in their traditions. When it was unveiled the people couldn’t believe there was such a clean and efficient hospital for free, just for them. It was a sort of miracle and a wonderful feeling because they perceived that we really do take care of them. It is a matter of respect,’ he says. To ensure that Port Sudan’s population has some sense of ownership towards the building, Emergency has trained local staff so that the clinic remains a Sudanese enterprise. ‘Apart from a pediatrician and a nurse, the rest are all Sudanese. We want to keep a high standard to the clinic. We don’t just build a hospital and then move away.’
Photography: Massimo Grimaldi & Emergency NGO
