Comfort and Care in Colonial Kinshasa’s Hospital Architecture

Abstract This article traces the history of urban colonial hospital planning in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing in particular on the development and design of the unfinished Hôpital des Congolais, by Belgian architect Georges Ricquier, in order to complicate the notion of architectural comfort. It highlights how, in the late colonial period, comfort for the colonized was no longer entirely neglected but was consciously deployed as a seemingly depoliticized tool. Through this approach, colonial authorities sought to bolster their international reputation and legitimate colonial rule while simultaneously molding the colonized into increasingly Westernized and productive citizens. By contesting comfort with archival traces of precolonial practices of care that endured into the colonial and postcolonial periods, this article also explores the role of African agency in these histories.