Bangladesh’s Friendship Hospital, built in a remote part of the southern district of Satkhira, has won the world's best new building award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for putting “care and humanity” at the heart of its design. 

Situated in a cyclone-prone area, the rural hospital was among the 16 buildings from 11 countries that had been selected as the finalists. It is designed in a manner that perfectly fits into the surrounding environment of shrimp fields. A zigzagged canal that passes through the middle of the whole campus separates the hospital’s inpatient and outpatient wards.  

The RIBA, which organizes the award every two years, selected the Friendship Hospital as its winner last week, saying the building design also provides  an "uplifting and inviting experience for visitors, patients, and healthcare professionals."

"I am encouraged that this may inspire more of us to commit, not in spite of, but because of limitations of resources and means, to an architecture of care both for humanity and for nature, to rise collectively to the urgencies that we face today on a planetary scale," Kashef Mahbood Chowdhury, the Bangladeshi architect who designed the building, said.

Kashef, the head of the architecture firm Urbana,  said the surrounding water was not always useful as the rising sea level turned the field into shrimp fisheries and the groundwater saline. So the collection of every drop of rainwater becomes very important, he said.  

Commissioned by sustainable development NGO Friendship, the 80-bed hospital is built with locally made bricks and has courtyards with shaded walkways. It building also has a rainwater harvesting system, which collects rainwater and prevents waterlogging in the nearby area.   

"It is a demonstration of how beautiful architecture can be achieved through good design when working with a relatively modest budget and with difficult contextual constraints," French architect and urban planner Odile Decq, who chaired the prize’s jury, was quoted as saying by CNN.  

(SAM)