From Zambia to Bangladesh to Kenya

A few months ago we won a competition for a development center in Zambia. As things stand now, the building will never be built in Zambia. As luck would have it, the Austrian Doctors became aware of the project. The organization has been active in Bangladesh for many years. Last year, they completed a multi-story hospital in Dhaka, which will soon become operational. The building permit for the hospital came with the requirement to build another, smaller facility on the land in Jamalpur as compensation and, in their opinion, the building fits perfectly. We are flying to Bangladesh in November for further investigations. This would be the second project in Bangladesh that we have been able to take part in. Things usually work out for the better...

....but what we did not anticipate was how the project would be tested before a single wall had risen. At the groundbreaking ceremony in Jamalpur, roughly a hundred people arrived — not to celebrate, but to threaten. Religious hardliners, opposed to the facility for reasons that had nothing to do with architecture and everything to do with fear, made it plain: if construction began, they would burn the surrounding village to the ground. The bricks had already been delivered. The other materials too. We stood on a site that was ready to become something, and had to make the decision to walk away.

The bricks were sold. The materials were dispersed. The project, in that place and in that form, was over.

And yet. A new site has since been acquired closer to Dhaka, where the building will eventually be realized after all. The idea has proven more resilient than the circumstances that tried to extinguish it.

In the meantime, the project found yet another life. Together with the Austrian Doctors, we adapted the design and built a version of it in the Rift Valley in Kenya — this time as a boarding school. Around twenty girls now have a home there, and with it, access to an education that would otherwise have been out of reach. It is not what we originally drew. It is, in many ways, more than we originally imagined.

Things usually work out for the better. We still believe that. Perhaps more than ever.