Vaccine Manufacturing Campus

Architecture & Frontage

An Arrival Sequence Built for What This Building Represents

Designing the Administration Block as the first impression of a national vaccine self-reliance programme

The problem

The facility isn't a private factory visited by its own staff. It's a flagship facility that regulators, government delegations, UNICEF and AMA procurement teams, and international health partners walk through as evidence that Ethiopia can produce PQ-ready vaccines at WHO Maturity Level 4. The Administration Block had to read as credible and world-class in the first thirty seconds of arrival — before anyone reaches a single production suite — while still functioning as genuine working space for a technical, GMP-regulated organisation.

The solution

Arrival opens into a double-height reception with full-height glazing — a deliberate first move that signals scale and transparency rather than a conventional low-ceilinged corporate lobby. From there, the block unfolds around two distinct kinds of space: working space (staff offices, the IT and digital backbone that runs the site's documentation and coordination systems) and gathering space, sized generously because this building expects visitors. Multiple conference suites of varying scale support everything from a routine internal review to a full stakeholder delegation, while an amphitheater gives the site a genuine assembly and presentation space — for regulatory briefings, training sessions, or the kind of announcement a national vaccine programme is built to make.

The outcome

An Administration Block that functions as both the working front office of a GMP facility and the space Ethiopia uses to show the world what it has built — without either role compromising the other.

Master Planning & Circulation

A Bridge, Stacked Storage, and a Campus That Moves Like One Building

Connecting production blocks and handling material at density, without treating either as an afterthought

The problem

A multi-block campus rising to six levels in places creates two practical problems the moment people and material need to move through it. First, connecting separate blocks at height without routing every transfer back down to ground level and across an open yard — which is both inefficient and, on a GMP site, a contamination and security risk. Second, warehousing at the density this facility needed without simply building more footprint, when the plot was already committed to production and administration space.

The solution

An elevated bridge connects two of the campus's production blocks directly at an upper level — letting personnel and controlled material move between buildings without descending to grade, crossing open site traffic, or passing through unnecessary security transitions. In the Warehouse Block, stacking storage was used deliberately rather than flat, single-layer racking, concentrating raw material and finished goods capacity into a smaller footprint — freeing plot area for what the campus actually needed more of: production floor and future expansion room. The warehouse's segregated intake and quarantine zones sit adjacent to this stacked storage, so material still moves through full traceability checks before release, regardless of where in the stack it's held.

The outcome

A campus that behaves like a single connected building rather than seven separate ones — with the bridge removing an entire layer of ground-level movement, and stacked warehousing giving the site storage density without spending plot area it needed elsewhere.

The problem

The solution

The outcome

The problem

The solution

The outcome

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