Case Study: Butaro Hospital, Butaro, Rwanda

By Jenna M. McKnight

In December 2006, while in the throes of a final charrette at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, first-year student Michael Murphy took a break to attend a speech by the noted humanitarian doctor Paul Farmer. Since 1987, Farmer’s organization, Partners In Health (PIH), has been building medical facilities in impoverished countries such as Haiti and Rwanda. Inspired by the talk, Murphy approached Farmer afterward to ask if he worked with architects. Farmer replied that he didn’t see the need; he sketched his last hospital on a napkin.