manuel herz + magueye ba develop senegal school building

architect manuel herz has collaborated with magueye ba, a doctor and contractor, to provide a small village in senegal with a school building. in 2017, manuel herz’s office was commissioned to design the a maternity and pediatric hospital in tambacounda in the east of senegal. the city is the regional capital of eastern senegal and the hospital serves a population of about one million people. herz’s design for the hospital incorporated a brise-soleil wall made of perforated bricks to ventilate the building.

image © iwan baan (also main image)

‘as it is one of the most important elements of the design and crucial for the climatic performance of the building, we had to find out if the bricks could be shaped efficiently, what geometry of bricks to choose, if the openings in the perforated bricks were the right size, how much sunlight would be blocked, if the airflow would work, and what the visual effect of the bricks would be,’ explains manuel herz. consequently, the architect asked magueye ba, who is also serving as the hospital’s general contractor, to build a test façade on the hospital grounds.

image © iwan baan

after a few weeks, herz and his team received photos of the first bricks and the construction of the test façade. however, it was not clear where magueye ba was building the wall until the architects were sent the final photos. these images showed that instead of building a structure for experimentation, which would have been removed after a brief examination, magueye ba had added three walls and a vaulted roof to the façade to create a small school building with a good interior climate and natural light.

image © iwan baan

‘this hybrid test façade school was also a hybrid in terms of design,’ herz says. ‘my façade design was extended according to the design of magueye ba. the meeting of different minds, interests and logics had produced a completely new result, which is characterized by hybridity and is in some ways much more beautiful than if it had been a pure object. the test façade became much more meaningful through the program of a village school, and an otherwise common village school gained in comfort and quality of climate and light through the use of the perforated bricks and the vaulted roof.’

the test façade school is made of cement-based bricks. four different brick and perforation geometries were tested, while three brick types were whitewashed afterwards. one brick type is pigmented with iron oxide. the building is naturally ventilated and requires no energy for operation. the architect adds that the natural ventilation has proved particularly valuable during the pandemic. read an interview with manuel herz on designboom here.