Announcing the Winners of the Kaira Looro 2024 for a Maternity Centre in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The renowned Kaira Looro architecture competition concludes its 2024 edition with the announcement of the winners, selected by a prestigious jury composed of some of the world’s most influential architects. Organized by the humanitarian organization Balouo Salo, this initiative aims to launch young architectural talents, support charity projects through competition proceeds, and develop research on humanitarian architecture aimed to improve the world and to reduce social inequalities.
This year’s competition focused on designing a Maternity Centre for rural areas in Southern Senegal, offering comprehensive healthcare throughout pregnancy. Today, in fact, in Sub-Saharan Africa, over 200,000 women die annually during pregnancy and childbirth due to insufficient healthcare facilities, medical personnel, and adequate sanitation. Rural women often travel over 50 kilometers to reach hospital facilities, with prohibitive costs for transport and medical care. Furthermore, a lack of education affects more than 60% of women, impeding their ability to learn about good hygiene practices and the risks of early pregnancy and unassisted childbirth. These issues lead to six out of ten women choosing traditional home births, exposing themselves and their newborns to significant health risks. The World Health Organization (WHO) provides guidelines to improve maternal and newborn care, including promoting access to healthcare, reducing maternal and neonatal mortality, and promoting hygienic delivery practices.

The competition sought innovative architecture models using sustainable technologies and promoting self-construction process. The design requirements included a maximum indoor surface area of 350 square meters, with specific areas such as reception, healthcare personnel spaces, examination and consultation areas, wards, labor and delivery areas, an operating area for caesarean sections, and a neonatal observation area.

Once again, this year, Kaira Looro is confirmed as one of the most recognized and influential architecture competitions worldwide. This edition saw exceptional participation, with around 900 teams from 112 countries, including Italy, Turkey, Poland, India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, United States, Colombia, Greece, Spain, Morocco and France.

On 9th July, the organization announced the 50 awarded projects. The 2024’s edition winner is young architect Bao Gia Luong from Vietnam, who receives €5000 and an internship at Kengo Kuma and Associates in Tokyo. The second prize, awarded to the team composed by Kanomi Fukuoka, Ryota Oreng, Hitoshi Takahashi, Ayaka Soda, Tomohiko Hama from Japan, includes €2000 and an internship at Benedetta Tagliabue EMBT in Barcelona. The third prize, awarded to Myrto Venizelou and Olga Psarri from Greece includes €1000 and an internship at SBGA Blengini Ghiradelli in Milan.

Two honorable mentions were awarded, one chosen by Kengo Kuma and the other by Balouo Salo, to Wei Yuan, Wei Bai, Sicheng Liu, Ziye Pan, Wu Yang Jiang from China and to Karl William Binlin-Dadie, Axel Rossi, Harrif Danon from France, respectively. Special mentions went to teams from Italy, Poland, France and Malesya. Additionally, 20 other finalists and 20 projects included in the Top 50 were recognized. All awarded projects will also be published in the official book of the competition, shared with the competition’s Global Media Partners as well as institutional partners, providing maximum visibility to emerging architectural talents worldwide.

WINNERS

1ST PLACE

Bao Gia Luong
Vietnam

This project begins on finding the current issues and establishing design criteria to ensure the proposal meets the safety needs of women who are or will soon become mothers. Most maternal deaths stem from the lack of medical facilities to meet the local childbirth needs, causing mothers to often give birth at home. However, due to a lack of knowledge about pre- and postnatal hygiene, along with midwives who are not highly skilled, many deaths result from hemorrhagic shock or infectious diseases. Therefore, this plan presents a model of a Maternity Center that provides a place meeting necessary conditions to ensure the health and mental well-being of the local people through three design strategies: 1. Honoring the vernacular architecture by utilizing local materials and forming a workflow that transitions from serving the community as a communal space for local residents to medical service areas. 2. Adaptability to serve as many patients as possible on the plot scale of 45m x 15m by providing two floor plans to accommodate the maximum number of beds (standard plan and bed-overload plan). 3. Scalability: choosing a module layout of 3.5m x 3.5m so that the model can easily be expanded to different areas depending on the favorable or challenging conditions that the lot on that territory is facing, applying the functions of each type of room appropriately. From the main entrance, guests will reach the reception desk with seating available inside and benches along the side corridor. Additionally, a well and facility’s water tank are used for collecting and storing reserve water that can be supplied to the outside community. A communal space is also arranged where people can gather and raise awareness about prenatal and postnatal health safety, with guidance performed by nurses and doctors.

2ND PLACE

Kanomi Fukuoka, Ryota Oreng, Hitoshi Takahashi, Ayaka Soda, Tomohiko Hama
Japan

This maternity center, located in a village in Senegal, features a design inspired by the traditional forms of settlements that have existed for generations. The three main volumes are derived from the necessary programs for the maternity center (the hall building, the ward, and the treatment building), each protected by expansive thatched roofs. For these volumes, operations such as shifting the walls, finely dividing and moving them to create a central pathway are carried out. This proposed maternity center, created by combining traditional thatched roofs with modern laterite and bamboo walls, will be a nurturing space for the minds and bodies of pregnant women, their families, and the medical staff working there, unlike conventional facilities that only had the function of childbirth.

3RD PLACE

Myrto Venizelou, Olga Psarri
Greece

In South Senegal, primary maternal care facilities are mainly concentrated in populated urban areas, leading to long travel times for those in remote rural regions. This disparity poses a significant threat to the lives of pregnant women and their babies. Limited access to basic care, unassisted childbirths, poor sanitary conditions, and lack of education on maternal health constitute great mortality risks. Located in Djibabouya village, in the Sédhiou region of Casamance, a Maternity Center will be built as a response to this issue raising awareness and ensuring access to maternal and newborn care in a sheltered and hygienic environment.
The proposal aims to create a secure and nurturing atmosphere, presenting an alternative to the prevalent enclosed and rigid maternity centers found in the southern region of Senegal. The care facility is divided into two sections in order to create a central cavity, a sunken courtyard, situated at the main entrance. The courtyard functions as a welcoming waiting area that could potentially accommodate education seminars, awareness meetings on maternal and neonatal care, and also, informal gatherings of prospective mothers. Its elliptical design signifies a spatial distinction from the introverted orthogonal volumes on both sections of the maternity center. Within each section, smaller medical units combine to form a composite. These units, featuring small openings for natural ventilation and lighting, are designed with the highest levels of hygiene and sanitation.
A permeable second skin wraps around the building composition in order to ensure privacy, safety and thermal comfort for healthcare personnel, pregnant women and newborns. Various shaded intermediary spaces are created where patients, family and staff can rest, chat, sit and wait during labor, recovery or in-between examinations and operations. The whole construction is raised on a platform and covered by an overhanging butterfly roof that protects the building’s core from heat and damaging rain and allows for the natural ventilation of the inner space. The roof design is made to facilitate effective rainwater harvesting, which could then be filtered and reused in the sanitation systems. Small green atriums are introduced to the building’s core to improve its microclimate featuring respective roof openings for stack ventilation.
The proposed design promotes an environmentally sustainable and functional healthcare institution that is not enclosed, but rather protected and inviting while meeting high hygienic and sanitary standards. In such a place, women can feel safe and comfortable to ask for advice, get tested, give birth, and even educate themselves on maternal issues that primarily affect them.