Size

Build: 16,620 sq. m. / 178,896 sq. ft.

Year

2014

Status

Completed

Client

Rwanda Ministry of Health, Partners In Health (Inshuti Mu Buzima)

Portrait of Christian Benimana, RA
Christian Benimana, RA
Senior Principal & Managing Director
Christian Benimana

Christian Benimana, RA

Senior Principal & Managing Director — Kigali

Christian Benimana joined MASS Design Group as a Global Health Corps Design Fellow in 2010. Today, Christian works as one of the firm's Senior Principals and Managing Directors, and is Director of the African Design Centre, a field-based apprenticeship that is set to empower leaders who will design a more equitable, just, and sustainable world. At MASS, he has been involved with design/build projects, development initiatives, operational and administration leadership. Christian has been listed among 10 architects and designers that are championing Afrofuturism and 2017 Quartz Africa Innovators. He has authored articles and book chapters including Re-Thinking the Future of African Cities in The African Perspective Magazine and Creating Design Leaders: The African Design Centre in Public Interest Design Education Guidebook.

Christian has taught at the Architecture School of the former Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and his goal is to develop the next generation of African designers with socially-focused design principles. Before joining MASS, he worked with LongiLat Architecture and Research in Shanghai assisting with the Porsche Center in Shanghai and the Netherlands Pavilion in the 2010 International Expo. Christian holds a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) of Tongji University in Shanghai, China (2008), and has served as the Secretary General of the East Africa Institute of Architects.

Collaborators

MEP Engineer - Edys Consultants
Quantity Surveyor - Edys Consultants
Structural Engineer - Edys Consultants

In 2013, MASS partnered with Inshuti Mu Buzima (IMB) and the Rwanda Ministry of Health (MOH) to help the Rwinkwavu District Hospital in the Kayonza District consider its 20-year development and growth from 2014- 2034. Since its opening in 1944, the Rwinkwavu Hospital has weathered both periods of abandonment and neglect, as well as ad-hoc and opportunistic investment. Because of this complex history, the hospital was struggling to adequately respond to its existing needs while also maintaining a thoughtful eye toward Rwanda’s coming needs.

In order to properly plan for the hospital’s future, MASS first undertook an intensive Needs Assessment that gathered, synthesized, and analyzed four categories of data inputs: existing spatial and programmatic conditions, national health infrastructure standards, stakeholder priorities, and catchment population projections.

In addition to this rigorous data collection process, MASS met with doctors and nurses, as well as IMB and Rwanda MOH standards and officials, to understand how this data and Rwanda’s growing Non-Communicable Disease burden could be reconciled and addressed in an organizational and site strategy for the next twenty years.

MASS ultimately produced a 20-year renovation and expansion masterplan for the hospital that was able to thoughtfully plan for a growing organizational strategic mission and national health care projections, while also responding to site limitations and conditions.