OPD Tower A, PNS Shifa, Karachi

OPD Tower A is the outpatient department of the expanded PNS Shifa, and the first building of the master plan to be finished. It is ground plus five storeys and 120,000 sq ft.

An outpatient department is judged by how far a patient walks and how long they wait. The tower stacks specialist clinics over five levels with the information desk, the general and officers' waiting areas and the procedure rooms with minor operating theatre placed so that a patient's route through a visit is short and does not double back. Bed lifts, service stairs, a garbage chute and a fire escape run separately, and a connecting ramp and corridor tie all five levels back into the existing hospital.

The building also holds a seminar and lecture hall, doctors' retiring rooms, staff rooms, a kitchenette, lavatory blocks and utility areas. The practice carried architecture, structural and MEP engineering and held project management and detailed supervision.