The Tambacounda Hospital Expansion Project offers not only the opportunity to provide necessary new bed spaces but also to choreograph and enhance the spatial sequencing of the immediate hospital precinct. This large-format-canopy-roof offers a shaded node, a social gathering point for patients and families waiting not only outside the new facilities but also for the adjacent wards.

The new maternity and paediatric units are according to local practice circular in form – they are new satellites that belong in their architectural character to the existing hospital constellation – their intention is a symbiosis of innovation and local tradition. The new block is anchored by the large circular building containing the Emergency Ward with seven beds as well as the Neonatology Ward and the Premature-birth Ward. The doctors Bureau is a smaller circular tower. It supports the counterface of the canopy roof. The Canopy Roof is chosen for climatic reasons, allowing cross ventilation. The wards with solid masonry walls and a concrete roof are not warmed by direct sunlight. The Canopy Roof is a sandwich panel, two layers of trapezoidal sheet metal, the upper and lower layer are screwed together at 90° to each other giving an extremely stable sandwich plate. The masonry walls of the wards provide support. Struts serving both as props and as ties to prevent the canopy from lifting in high winds. Water collected by the Canopy Roof is channelled to a spiral garden.