English
Pavilion of the Teaching Hospital
Panaji [Panagi/Pangim/Panjim/Nova Goa], Goa, India
Equipment and Infrastructures
The Pavilion of the Goa Teaching Hospital [Hospital Escolar] was part of a larger project for a central hospital organised by autonomous pavilions where the medical and pharmacy schools should also function. The initial project was finished in late 1921 and financial viability assured by a special fund approved to back various improvements in Goa. Several factors led the project to be dropped, among them the loca- tion in Altinho and the removal of the coordinator, the engineer Afonso Zuzuarte de Mendonça, then the director of Public Works. In early 1922 a new site was chosen. The project was given to the architect Ramachondra Mangesh Adwalpalkar, who designed in a single building the two main pavilions from the earlier project, the maternity and surgery, the only ones eventually built. The maternity was on the ground floor and the surgery above. Zuzuarte de Mendonça was reinstated in September 1923 and contested the solution for functional reasons, but considered it to be better from an aesthetic standpoint. He also refers to replacing the floor structure by reinforced concrete slabs, a solution rarely used in Goa at the time. The rest of the structure was maintained in laterite. But with respect to the known project plan, the main elevation was subject to some changes in the area of the arcades, whose number was reduced, thus changing the proportion slightly. These changes seem to have been made to strengthen the building’s structure. In June 1924 the work was adjudicated to the Goan builder Madevá Sinai Bobó e Calculó. The work progressed slowly and in 1927 it was still unfinished. The building helped consolidate an area under development since the beginning of the century and enabled the shoreline Avenida Marginal to assert itself as one of the city’s main thoroughfares. Its designer played a fundamental role in the affirmation of this building as a singular example in Goa. Adwalpakar was not just the first architect but also the first Hindu known to integrate the technical personnel of Goa’s Public Works. He was educated in Mumbai, and the influence of British India shows naturally in this building. The importance given to climate and the sense of state representation are the concerns most present. Such care was at the time more common in British India than in Portuguese India. The building underwent renovations in 2005 which introduced small spatial changes while respecting the overall construction. It is nowadays the most visible face of the Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa.