‘Osmania General Hospital can last for another 200 years’
“When a patient comes with a problem,” Anuradha Reddy, convener of the Hyderabad chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage says, “We don’t euthanise them. We assess, analyse and then, we treat.”
This ironic analogy is what Reddy uses to explain the situation Hyderabad’s famous Osmania General Hospital is currently in. After an intensive three-day survey that included personnel from Intach, conservation architects, structural engineers and architects from other disciplines, Reddy maintains all the building really needs is a “little maintenance”.
“The problems exist only because of neglect. There has been no maintenance whatsoever. Problems like water seepage come from the fact that drain pipes don’t go all the way to the ground, so they fall back on the walls or on whichever unfortunate soul is under them,” she says.
Experts are also confident the building — which has stood on its own for almost a century — is powerful enough to fight off elements for another 200 years.
Hyderabad-based architect Anuradha Naik, who inspected the building after an invitation from the Osmania Medical College Alumni Association, said “the hospital was designed for requirements at that point of time”.
“If super-speciality hospitals have come up now and things have developed, structural and technical components need to be integrated into the building in a sensitive manner. OGH was built and designed to be a hospital, and it still can be one.”
Worth the cost?
But just how much would it take to turn the dilapidated hospital into a world-class one? While Naik believes that an ad-hoc figure can only be calculated once all medical requirements are taken into consideration, Reddy says the restoration project will cost a lot lesser than the demolition.
“It’s made of granite, which is really strong. You’ll be wasting a resource which is ready to be used again. It could probably cost just about Rs 1-3 crore to restore the building,” she explains. “The ventilation and lighting in the hospital is fantastic because the walls are thick and are made of stone,” she adds, saying that even if the decision to move patients out of the building couldn’t be changed, “adaptive reuse” could be applied to the original structure and have it turned into an administrative or an out-patient block, or even a medical museum, to celebrate the city’s rich history in the field of medicine.
“The first chloroform trials took place right here, but the chloroform block — for which we had received international recognition — was demolished by N.T. Rama Rao,” Reddy says. She adds, “There’s enough space around to build impeccable, modern structures that could replace the current units in the main block. We can even give a Conservation Management Plan that doesn’t just talk about the building but its surroundings and even takes note of patient comfort as well. They (the government) just have to say, ‘Yes, we want this.’”
That secretive report
The original report, conducted by officials from the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, that said the building needed to be torn down has to be made public, both, Naik and Reddy say. “No one has seen the report,” Reddy says, “But I heard (strictly hearsay) that the report doesn’t recommend demolition. It only talks about neglect and other aspects.” Naik adds that we shouldn’t be so hasty in tearing down a building that has become a “symbol of what Hyderabad stands for”.
“The Osmanian style is a very deliberate attempt to portray secularism through architecture, which is probably the most visual of all the arts. It was designed to last — tearing it down shouldn’t even be considered as an option,” says Naik.
