Category: cultural space
Commissioned by: Mariam Magdy
Helwan, Cairo, Egypt
November 2024
Since its founding in 1940, Behman Psychiatric Hospital in Helwan has gradually expanded with additional buildings, while its landscaped grounds have been carefully cultivated and maintained. Last year, designer Mariam Magdy was commissioned to repurpose one of these buildings into a museum. The low-rise structure, characterized by its unique spatial configuration, now houses items that showcase the evolution of psychiatric medicine—from obsolete switchboard systems and nurses’ records to rare scholarly books, medical tools, and machinery that were once considered revolutionary.
After cataloging the many objects at hand and learning about their history through conversations with the hospital’s doctors and staff, she planned the exhibition's configuration and designed custom display units crafted in the hospital's own wood workshop, primarily using existing on-site resources.
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