The brand new ruins of public health. A tale of two buildings, Kinshasa, DRC

This text reflects on the specific trajectory of two medical buildings in Kinshasa, which once epitomized the progressive ambitions of tropical modernism. From blueprints to ruins (and back), the uncanny history of the Institut d’Enseignement Médical (IEM) and of the Hopital du Cinquantenaire (formerly Hopital Cardiologique), both located in Kasa-Vubu, Kinshasa, captures what Achille Mbembe describes as the “interlocking of ages” that define the experience and materiality of time in Africa. The two buildings were conceived as showcases of development, then turned into ruins in the 1990’s, before being reborn in the 2010’s as emblems of Congolese renaissance, and immediately criticized as symptoms of the illusory nature of Joseph Kabila’s presidential promises. Their trajectory points simultaneously to various, at times opposed, political and aesthetical directions, towards the uncertain future of the post-millennial building boom, and back to the modernist age of planification and “social colonialism”.