Completed in 2017
New Delhi
This is a renovation project of an existing nursing home that was previously a residential space.
Two floors were chosen to be renovated: the ground and the second. While the former programmatically became the OPD section the latter floor accommodated the patients rooms. Maximising doctors cabins and in-patient rooms on the two floors, the pubic zone of these floors initiated the aesthetic conception of the project that of a banded space.
The mandate of insuring protection to the wall surface from stretchers and human handling creates a continuous horizontal blue band that morphs vertically to express entrances to cabins/ rooms. Contrasting the blue is a smoked shade of veneer that forms the corridor ceiling and folds into key functional areas: the reception in the ground floor and nursing station in the second floor. The blue band continues inside the cabins and rooms to mark their entrances, morphing as a vertical fold on to the ceiling.
The inpatients rooms windows are re-proportioned for maximising light and in the ground floor continuous sheets of sandwiched glass with aluminium CMC cut jallis articulate the OPD zones. The jalli alludes to the idea of interfacing medicinal molecular structures with natural cell structures.The reception space is created in the existing driveway with polycarbonate sheeting. Natural light is brought in through skylights as the reception and the billing become objects within the banded space.
