Steve Brooks, a principal at OZ Architecture, and Carl Worthington, the firm's director of urban design and planning, will head a team to design a visionary master plan for the revitalization of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda. Read
Into Africa
Boulder architects to design master plan for Kigali, Rwanda

By Karen Mitchell, For the Camera
June 6, 2005

It's a long way from Colorado to Rwanda — geographically and economically.

Two architects from a Boulder-based firm are going the distance.

Steve Brooks, a principal at OZ Architecture, and Carl Worthington, the firm's director of urban design and planning, will head a team from OZ to design a visionary master plan for the revitalization of Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.

The three-pronged project encompasses plans for the reconfiguration and subsequent expansion of the King Faisal Hospital, and following that, master planning for the creation of a new city center and airport.

The project's team includes Kelly Yamasaki, OZ's education specialist, as well as outside consultants.

"I've worked in Cape Town on a resort complex, but this is my first in terms of a major urban development in central Africa," Worthington says. "It's a tremendous opportunity, a rare opportunity to create a new model of a democratic, ecological high-tech city that would become a symbol of the new Africa."

Both Brooks and Worthington have considerable experience overseas. Brooks has worked and volunteered in Afghanistan for the International Foundation of Hope, has taught in Uganda and has designed a maternity addition to a Nepalese hospital.

Worthington, known locally for his visionary planning for the Denver Tech Center , also has designed a new city, Tomatoh, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, a development for 100,000 people that is a model of ecology and greenbelt design with a high-density urban center.

Worthington's connection to John Dick, a former Denver Tech Center partner, was the catalyst for the Rwanda contract. Dick, a developer who lives on the British Channel Island of Jersey, met Rwanda President Paul Kagame there in 1994, and has been involved with rebuilding Rwanda ever since.

Dick is currently Rwandan Honorary Counsel General, and is a partner in Tericom Ltd., which is laying fiber-optic cable in the country.


Building for a boom

Rwanda is a mountainous, central African country, about the size of Maryland. It is still recovering from the horror and destruction that occurred during 100 days of genocide in 1994, as depicted in last year's film "Hotel Rwanda" and in Philip Gourevitch's 1998 book "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda."

More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed by extremist Hutus during the 100 days.

Prior to the genocide, the population of Kigali was about 250,000. It now approaches 1 million as opportunities grow in the city, and that number is expected to triple during the next 12 years.

Kagame commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Front, , the Tutsi rebel force that, in 1994, defeated the Hutu regime. He became president in 2000, and captured 95 percent of the vote during elections in 2003, according to the BBC.

"My impression of him is that he's a soft-spoken man who is rational, perceptive and practical," Brooks says. "I think he's the figurehead and the center of all that is happening in Rwanda today. He has a sincere personal vision of what Rwanda can become. He's invited vendors and investors to visit, and has said he doesn't want red tape or corruption or bribes involved in business. I believe his interests are genuine, that he wants to build a model for the rest of Africa."

It was Dick who suggested to Kagame that he talk with Worthington about the physical planning for Kigali. Kagame and members of his cabinet have come to Denver twice, in 2003, and again in May 2004, when Kagame spoke at the University of Denver about the Rwandan genocide and visited OZ's Denver office to discuss planning possibilities.

"I first met (Kagame) just after he spoke at a Fortune 500 event in Aspen in July 2003," Worthington says. "We toured the Denver Tech Center, the 1,000-acre Meridian Office Park and the Jefferson Corporate Center, all projects with which (Dick) was involved. I presented a slide show of what the DTC looked like in 1962 — rolling grasslands with a 40-acre vision that grew into an important mixed-use, high-tech ecological center. It started with an idea and grew to be 850 acres. That's 20 million square feet. The Rwandans began to see that we also had visions and were able to carry them out without big government funding. You find the money."

OZ's contract from the Rwandan government's Ministry of Infrastructure is similar to its contracts with the U.S. General Services Administration, providing 'one-stop shop' design services, ranging from socio-economical feasibility to electrical engineering, Brooks says.

"The money is coming to us directly from the Rwandan government, with no other organization involved. We have a depth of expertise on our staff for any project type, from residential to high-tech," he says. "For specialty disciplines, we have a large network of expert consultants with whom we collaborate to address any specific need."


Building in phases

The first part of the three-pronged project will focus on a master plan for the reconfiguration of Kigali's King Faisal Hospital, a Saudi Arabia-funded facility built in 1991. The hospital will be remodeled in several phases, beginning in 2006 with design plans to expand existing emergency and maternity departments, and eventually, to add an outpatient block, relocate medical offices to the campus and build a new training school for nurses. The plans also include an educational facility for physicians, who are currently trained at National University in the southern part of the country.

"We want to phase construction for the site so it is fully utilized, enabling it to be a 300-bed hospital as needed for a medical school," Brooks says. "We're looking at the site to see where the opportunities are to expand and have additions. The last phase will be the creation of a technical block for traditional acute care, such as surgical and cancer care."

Rwanda still has a big AIDS problem, he says, but long-term AIDS care will remain decentralized, serving various regions of the country.

Project Cure, a Denver-based charitable organization that ships medical supplies to needy areas around the world, will supply much of the medical equipment for the hospital project.

OZ will provide programming, master plans and schematic designs for the hospital project before handing it over to local architects for construction documents and administration, Brooks says.


Hoping for a hub

Worthington, who will focus on master planning for the new city center and airport, hopes to begin design work within the next few months. The old city center will be utilized, but the new core will be built to the south, closer to the new airport site and the Nyabarongo River.

"Kagame hopes the airport will become the transportation hub of central Africa," Worthington says.

The airport cost has not been finalized, he adds.


OZ Architecture is equipped for handling the Rwandan projects because it has broad experience in a number of different arenas, from healthcare to resorts to high-tech labs, Brooks says.

"With Carl's expertise, we are looking at how these all go together and are interested in building communities, not just buildings," he adds. "We are looking at the broader context of how we live."

Architectural planning and design has the power to bring hope into a difficult and dark past, Brooks says.

"We talk about the future in a positive way about the possibilities of the way things could be," he says. "So we must both be idealist and realist, as we are entrusted with the responsibility of making people's dreams a reality."