The architects of a new kind of health care

Michael Murphy was 26 years old, and deep into final exams his first semester at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, when Dr. Paul Farmer came to campus to speak. Murphy knew of Farmer, who in 1987 cofounded Partners in Health, to serve Haitis neediest.

It was 2006, World AIDS Day, and Murphy headed over to hear what Farmer had to say. He had no idea that the speech he crammed into his busy schedule would determine the direction of his lifes work.

Farmer told the students about the homes and hospitals Partners in Health (PIH) was building in rural Haiti, Rwanda, and Peru. Murphy was moved. This guy was talking about architecture, but hes calling it health care, he recalls. As a student, I thought it was an interesting reframing of architecture as a key piece of the health care delivery system.

After the speech, Murphy found Farmer and asked how he could help.

Architects? responded Farmer. Why do I need an architect? I just draw it all out on the back of a napkin.

But an e-mail correspondence began, and at the end of his first year in graduate school, Murphy spent the summer in rural Rwanda, working with Partners in Health. Farmers team was treating some of the poorest people in the world, people whose lives had been devastated by the 1994 genocide that killed 800,000 in 100 days.

Murphys lofty aim: to show how architecture fits snugly into the health care cause. Farmer and his colleagues, who had already built clinics and hospitals, agreed that professional architects could indeed help. Shortly after Murphy returned to Harvard, they asked if he could help build a state-of-the-art hospital in Rwanda. It would serve Burera, a district with a population of 400,000, one doctor, and no hospital.

I didnt know how to build a hospital, says Murphy, now 32. But when Paul Farmer calls you, you say yes.

Murphys classmate Alan Ricks, 29, offered to help, along with a few other students and professors. Murphy spent the winter term in Rwanda, puzzling the project out with Farmer and the Rwandan minister of health. We realized it was more than just helping draw up a few plans, says Murphy. It really was about a new vision of architecture.

In 2010, that vision would become MASS Design Group, a Boston team of architects committed to projects that will improve both the health and the lives of a community. With nonprofit status pending, MASS Model of Architecture Serving Society has often teamed up with Partners.

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The architects of a new kind of health care