A Serene Space for Compassionate Palliative Care
Imagine a hospital where there are no harsh white lights, no long, blank corridors and no windowless rooms. Instead imagine natural light bouncing off water bodies and earthy stone walls interspersed by natural green cover. The Karunashraya Hospice, first built in 1999 was designed with this vision. The hospice provides palliative care to people with advanced stage cancer patients who are beyond curative medical treatment. The hospice provides medical, emotional as well as social support to people, free of cost.
The design of the hospice has won several accolades over the years. Recently, an extension to the hospice, the Karunashraya Institute for Palliative Care Education and Research(KIPCER) was added. KIPCER expands the vision of the Karunashraya into education, training and research. Karunashraya and the KIPCER centre are both social projects, envisioned and implemented by highly dedicated and committed people with the support of donations.
Project brief
The Karunashraya campus is around 5 acres, of which the KIPCER extension occupies 2 acres. The site housed several existing trees, and the design preserves all the existing trees, with the building envelope woven around the landscape.
The KIPCER project brief called for an out-patient department(OPD), a training centre with a 100-seater auditorium and classrooms, guest rooms, a canteen, a charity shop and office spaces. The buildings are arranged in a north-south direction accessed from the west, and the two largest open areas between the trees were allocated to training centre and the OPD, with the canteen between them.
The OPD is built as a compact one-floor block organised around a central waiting area which has a small water body, and opens out into the greenery around the block. The training center is also designed around a central open area which has an amphitheatre and open spaces. The transition spaces are designed to seamlessly flow into one another, and to double as multifunctional informal interaction spaces for the users of the facility. The amphitheater serves as an informal classroom, and the double-height skylit lobby functions as both a pre-function area for the auditorium and a breakout space for the classrooms.
Drawings of the KIPCER building
Design elements
Light as an integral part of the space
Decades of research has shown that natural light has a positive effect on mental wellbeing. The use of light was important to enhance the space in multiple ways: it reflects on the ceilings of the rooms, it is diffused through the mango and neem trees in the court, it creates a play of shadows in the double height atriums. The entire building has spaces that flow from one to another and the indoors also merging into the outdoors rather than being strictly demarcated. This adds to the movement of light through the building.
Material Palette
Locally available grey granite stone is the main building material, used in the walls in a rough form. The color palette in the common areas is composed grey and white tone, which allows a neutral background for nature and light to take over. Inside the auditorium a bit of beige and light brown shades are introduced to add warmth.
‘For it is in giving that we receive’
Compassionate care and dignity are the underlying principles of the hospice.
It is this theme of compassion and giving that was also reflected in the wall art designed in the lobby area of the training centre. ‘For it is in giving that we receive’ is a quote by Saint Francis of Assisi, highlighting the power of giving. The quote is often symbolically depicted using two hands reaching for each other, and it is this image that is interpreted as wall art as a focal point of the lobby.
Since its inception, Karunashraya has helped thousands of people receive care and compassion when they were beyond cure. It is our privilege to be associated with such a project and to play a small role in improving the wellbeing of people when they were in the most critical stage of their life.
Project: Karunashraya Extension
Typology: Institutional
Project Architects: PN Medappa, Shwetha Chandran
Photos: Shamanth Patil
Text: Archita S
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