Healthcare professionals, architects and planners are investigating adaptive reuse as an alternative approach to rampantly build more infrastructure, Ar. Ravideep Singh, Associate Director, Creative Designer Architects

Santosh Children’s HospitalSantosh Children’s Hospital

What learnings has the pandemic brought in its wake?
The first two waves of Covid-19 brought forth the inadequacies in our healthcare system. Hospitals struggled with insufficient medical infrastructure and healthcare workers. Make-shift beds, overworked staff and inefficient allocation of resources put patients’ lives at risk.

With learnings from the pandemic, hospitals are now taking measures to prepare themselves better. While existing hospitals plan to use their available space and resources efficiently, future medical facilities are being planned to tackle any unprecedented crisis.

Paras Healthcare, KanpurParas Healthcare, Kanpur

What new initiatives do you see emerging in the design space?
Even as architects and city planners are pursuing new ways to build green buildings and battle climate change, adaptive reuse of older, depleted, or otherwise vacant buildings is gaining momentum. Lately, the phenomenon of adaptively repurposing and reusing existing built structures has been a successful endeavour for several industrial and commercial projects.
Ar. Ravideep Singh
The efficacy of ‘adaptive reuse’ especially in healthcare is gradually gaining meaningful acceptance. The pandemic-imposed urgency has led cities to swiftly ramp up, expand, and set up new health infrastructure

Ar. Ravideep Singh

In a pandemic-ridden world, healthcare systems across the globe are grappling with decreasing reimbursements and increasing costs. Healthcare planners are exploring various strategies that can enable setting up and expanding healthcare facilities — rapidly and economically.

Sarvodaya Hospital, NoidaSarvodaya Hospital, Noida

What benefits will accrue due to adaptive reuse?
The notion of adaptive reuse strategy’s sizable reduction in cost and time observed in the other building types might not transpire as such in healthcare facilities by certain peculiarities that healthcare environments necessitate. However, with careful consideration and meticulous planning, this approach offers financial, environmental, and communal benefits.