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#PUBLIC ARCHITECTURE PROJECTS

Maternity House in Zambia

Architect Mikiko Endo collaborated with JOICPF, a non-profit organization in Japan, to design and build this "maternity house" in Zambia, southern Africa.

Located in a rural farming district, the building provides a place for women to stay during the end of their pregnancy and receive health services for a safe birth. We asked Endo about the project.

Architect, Mikiko Endo talked about the project in an interview with japan-architects.com's Yuna Yagi.

What‘s the basic concept behind this project?

“If only art and design could serve society to the point where they actually reduced the number of unnecessary deaths!” That was the stance from which I approached this project. In rural Zambia, women often give birth at home because clinics are located far from farm villages. Many women die in childbirth due to poor sanitary conditions and birthing practices. This maternity house, built next to an obstetric clinic, provides a place for women to stay towards the end of their pregnancy and await childbirth without fear. In order to build the house cheaply and quickly, we re-used shipping containers that had originally been used to send aid from Japan. Yet I knew that many overseas aid projects fail to take root in local communities even if a physical structure of some sort is successfully built. My challenge was to design a structure that was attractive enough to grab the attention of local villagers who don’t own televisions or read newspapers, and get them to think, ”Hey, I’d like to stay at this place and give birth safely!” – but also to build something that would make corporate and individual donors from Japan think, “This is such a great building, I’d definitely like to support similar projects in the future!” It was a problem of motivating people in both countries to act. My solution was to gather 100 local residents to participate in a workshop where we decorated the maternity house with leaf-shaped stamps and the names of 100 Japanese donors.

How did you get involved with the project?

In 2008 I learned about JOICPF, an international NGO that promotes mother-child health, and took a trip to Zambia to learn about the AIDS problem there first-hand. The people I met were so sparkling with life, their lives so rooted in the overwhelming power of nature, that I felt our completely urbanized lives here in Japan had become degenerate or atrophied. The houses made from local earth baked into bricks, with roofs of straw gathered in the grasslands nearby, were too beautiful to put into words. In contrast, the design that we find throughout our cities and the architectural debates we engage in struck me as terribly insignificant. What could I offer as an architect? As I thought about that question, I realized that no matter how greatly levels of development, economic systems, or cultures differ, the joy at those moments when we think “I’m glad to be alive!” is the same for people all around the world. I began to think that if I was going to continue as an architect, I’d like to be doing work that truly touches that part of us. I realized that the idea I’d been applying here in Japan to community and commercial structures, of creating designs that attract people, would also be quite useful for designing desperately needed facilities in Zambia. Working together with JOICPF, I developed a concrete project.

Were there any differences between the project as you originally conceived it and the structure that was actually built? Tell us about any challenges you encountered or innovative solutions you came up with.

The gap between what Japanese donors were imagining and what people on the ground wanted was a problem. In terms of gaining support for the project [in Japan], reusing shipping containers was an indispensable element because of the narrative of sustainability that it created and the positive CSR image it contributed to. But in the local community, the concept of reuse as a positive thing had not yet emerged, and instead I faced extreme opposition because people had a very negative image of reuse in terms of safety, functionality, and appearance. After I met with local people, listened to their concerns, explained the concept, and showed them attractive models and pictures of the planned structure, however, they quickly changed their minds and agreed to the proposal.

How is this project similar to or different from your past projects?

The biggest difference was the fact that I was working with multiple, diverse clients spread out on opposite sides of the globe. In Japan there was Uniqlo, Cath Kidston, Ai Tominaga’s charity organization, and individual donors. In Zambia there was the clinic, the health department, and the local volunteers. Each had a different cultural perspective and a different image of what they wanted. Instead of gearing the design solution towards a specific group of people as I’d done in previous projects, I tried to achieve a simple, open plan that the whole community would be able to understand and accept. I was also worried about how to lead a workshop with people whose language, religion, and culture were completely different from my own, but in the end the local participants taught me that laughter, song, and dance are a language shared around the world.

What do you value most or take the most care with in your design work?

Will the people who engage with my project smile from the bottom of their heart when they are there? How much will people’s lives be enriched by living in a place that I designed? Will the structures I’ve built be able to take their place beautifully yet humbly in the larger order of things, to exist without arrogance before the gods and Mother Nature? How does this project fit into current architectural trends?

This wasn’t the sort of project where the government or a private corporation has a certain budget and so someone chooses an architect to build something, but rather a case where people in the community were saying “Wouldn’t it be great to have a place like this,” and architects and NGOs developed an idea based on that need, and finally the project was carried out through the combined efforts and positive thoughts of all the people who agreed that it was a good idea. It was accomplished because Uniqlo, Cath Kidston, Ai Tominaga, individual donors, and the 100 volunteers on the ground who painted the house as they sang all came together for a single purpose. For me, this building is not a lifeless box but rather a structure full of the wishes of everyone involved in its creation, full of an invisible beauty that will contribute to the prosperity and success of this place for many years to come. What did you learn from this project? What will you bring from it to future projects?

When the project was completed and we held the opening ceremony, the 100 people who had helped paint it paraded through the maternity house singing and dancing. The voices that echoed through the small space were the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard. Tears still come to my eyes just remembering it. I want to keep creating architecture that deals head-on with questions of life and human happiness. I don’t want to forget what I learned from this project, which is that beyond the prestige of the individual architect, there exists a much bigger, broader world of joy.

Songs of joy filled the building at the opening ceremony.

Details

  • Copperbelt, Zambia
  • Mikiko Endo

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