Paras Yash Kothari Hospital Uttar Pradesh, India healthcare building images, Architecture design

Paras Yash Kothari Hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India

23 August 2024

Architecture: CDA

Location: New Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

Photos © Noughts and Crosses

Paras Yash Kothari Hospital, Uttar Pradesh Building

Located near the banks of the river Ganges, at New Kanpur, the Paras Yash Kothari Hospital is a 430-bed super-speciality healthcare centre. The hospital caters to the needs of a tier-two city like Kanpur and its surrounding towns and villages with a state-of-the-art facility that promises to offer specialised healthcare services in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

The Paras group appointed CDA to help create the state’s biggest tertiary care multi-speciality hospital. The hospital has been planned and developed to garner a resoundingly positive response from the residents of the city of Kanpur and the numerous surrounding towns and villages because of the modern offerings and unparalleled scale that this facility provides.

Addressing Demands for Affordable Healthcare
Yash Kothari Memorial Hospital continues to share a synergistic relationship with India’s burgeoning middle-class population, which longs for affordable delivery of high-quality healthcare. The hospital accommodates more than 400 beds and over 100 intensive care beds. It also houses a dedicated oncology medicine department with two linear accelerators and Nuclear Medicine, among other highly advanced departments and technologies.

The design for Yash Kothari Memorial Hospital emanates from three guiding principles woven together seamlessly to create a highly functional, flexible, and resilient hospital building – sustainability, streamlined operations and user experience.

Embracing Adaptive Reuse for Efficiency
Incorporating adaptive reuse as a core principle, the Yash Kothari Memorial Centre significantly reduced construction time and cost by reusing an existing structure. This innovative approach resulted in a completed healthcare facility within a remarkable 18 months, achieving substantial cost savings compared to a traditional greenfield project of this scale.

The design team strategically addressed the limitations of the existing building to optimise functionality. For instance, demolishing the first-floor slab created a double-height foyer, fostering a more patient-friendly and inviting atmosphere. Similarly, removing a portion of the floorplate introduced a double-height green open space, enhancing the overall experience.

The narrow floor space and low floor height of the original structure presented challenges. However, through strategic programming and zoning, the architects seamlessly augmented services by extending the existing floor plate and adding an additional 10 feet along the courtyard’s internal periphery. This resulted in a consistent circulation spine across all floors. With a modular spine on each floor, wayfinding within the large hospital complex is efficient, and optimal daylighting is achieved throughout, with the atrium serving as a central orienting point for both rural and urban visitors.

At the heart of the hospital lies a monumental central courtyard. This light-filled atrium acts as an organising element, connecting various departments and creating a welcoming environment for patients and visitors alike. The courtyard also serves as a hub for positive distractions, fostering a sense of calm and tranquillity throughout the facility.

Evidence-Based Design with Functional Efficiency

The hospital design embodies a reinterpretation of the ‘Breitfuss’ Model, promoting seamless operations by minimising walking distances for staff and visitors alike. Programmatically similar functions are strategically grouped within close proximity. Following this principle, the 9-story structure integrates emergency care, ambulatory care, and surgical departments on the lower floors. This functional distribution is reflected in the building’s physical appearance, where the upper floors housing in-patient rooms appear distinct from the lower floors, separated by a service deck in between.

The modular patient rooms are designed to minimise errors and ensure optimal efficiency for healthcare staff. Warm, healing colours and natural materials in the patient rooms aim to reduce stress and promote healing. Each patient room benefits from expansive windows, providing ample natural light and outdoor views to enhance the patient experience.

Thoughtfully designed and accessible healing gardens within the building offer a sense of control to patients and encourage movement and exercise. These landscaped pockets also serve as cultural congregation spaces, while the outdoor patios function as extended break rooms for staff. Additionally, the third-level courtyard is intended to be a sanctuary for patients, providing a safe outdoor space that promotes recovery in line with evidence-based healthcare design principles.

The design incorporates a significant number of single rooms, introducing a new typology of smaller rooms measuring only 160-180 sq. ft. This approach deviates from conventional Indian healthcare planning, which often prioritises multi-patient wards to maximise bed count, potentially compromising infection control and increasing patient risks.

Sustainability and Construction via Integrated Design Delivery

The fixed deck-to-deck heights presented challenges during the planning stage. However, these hurdles were overcome through intensive workshops employing a complex BIM-driven integrated design delivery method. This collaborative approach streamlined the inherent complexities of constructing and delivering a large-scale hospital with diverse services in Kanpur, India. The existing real estate offered ample opportunities to efficiently plan services and minimise vehicular traffic within the facility. Notably, the hospital planning for ICU, OPD, and IPD utilises only 70 percent of the total floor area, ensuring ample space for future expansion.

Solar panels offset approximately 10 percent of the total connected load. Additionally, the south and west facades use insulated glass to minimise heat gain. The hospital is set to achieve a USGBC LEED GOLD Healthcare rating, ensuring efficiency across various disciplines.

The Yash Kothari Memorial Hospital sets new benchmarks for contemporary healthcare infrastructure in India with strategic interventions, meticulous planning, and holistic utilisation of the existing structure. Amidst all the new medical facilities in New Kanpur, the hospital by the Yash Kothari group looks forward to being the go-to destination for the healthcare needs of the urban and the surrounding rural areas.

Paras Yash Kothari Hospital, Uttar Pradesh, India – Building Information

Location: Kanpur
Name of Client: Paras Healthcare
Name of Client’s Firm: Paras Healthcare Private Limited
Principal Architect: Ravideep Singh, Maninder Kaur, Mohanbir Singh
Design Team: Ravideep Singh, Maninder Kaur, Mohanbir Singh, Prannay Dhingra

Site Area (sq ft & sq m): 3 Acres
Built-Up Area (sq ft & sq m): 430,000 sq. ft.
Start Date: January 2022
Completion Date: January 2024

Photographer: Noughts and Crosses

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Paras Yash Kothari Hospital, Uttar Pradesh, India images / information received 230824 from epistle communications

Location: New Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, central India

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