Arogya Patient Accommodation Facility

Cancer treatment at the Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital & Research Centre, a unit of the Tata Memorial Centre, can run for weeks, and many patients travel a long way for it with a family member beside them. The Patient Accommodation Facility gives them somewhere to stay within reach of the hospital. Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited is building it as a Corporate Social Responsibility project, and ARCH-EN DESIGN is its Architect and project management consultant.

A block beside the Dharamshala

The new building stands next to the campus’s existing two-storey Dharamshala and is joined to it. Between the two, a paved court under a canopy becomes the shared front door. The block is planned as a U around an open court, with stilt parking on the ground floor and a glazed bridge at second-floor level that carries residents across the campus.

Rooms, and a day around them

Of the 115 rooms, 85 are twin-sharing and 30 are private, giving 200 beds over the upper floors. Each floor has its own pantry, a duty room and a store, and the rooms open onto balconies set aside for fresh air and rest. Rooms for wheelchair users are on the first floor.

• Ground floor: entrance lobby, reception and waiting, an orientation hall, a general and medical shop, an ATM, dining with a kitchen, and laundry
• First floor: a crèche, a puja room and a multi-faith prayer room, a gym, a meditation and yoga room, an indoor sports room, a multipurpose hall and a library
• Second to seventh floors: twin-sharing and private rooms

A building that does not look like a ward

The façades are in warm cream, with terracotta, sage and ochre panels between the windows and a climbing pattern of leaves cut into the corner walls. Rounded corners and a tall stair core with a slot of glass give the block an easy, domestic presence, closer to a guest house than to a hospital.