Clin­ical Trials

Breed­ing an atmo­sphere of good health at a new woman’s health clinic. Pho­tos: Emma-Jane Heth­er­ing­ton.
(From ProDesign 105 with addi­tional draw­ings and photos.)

Ceil­ing detail.

Med­ical clin­ics, well-worn places where the lino wraps up the walls and the tang of dis­in­fect­ant hangs heav­ily in the air. In the wait­ing room it’s hot, too hot, and the car­pet is as worn as the magazines. Or per­haps not, as illus­trated by this clinic design. Admit­tedly, this is a spe­cial­ist woman's health clinic, so per­haps there's more room for mould break­ing. Still, the form of this clinic would have been quite dif­fer­ent if the cli­ent – Dr Anil Sharma – didn’t have a rebel streak, a vis­ion of some­thing better.

Sharma enlis­ted Tim Dor­ring­ton Archi­tects for the clinic design. Archi­tects Tim Dor­ring­ton and Sam Atcheson say that he had done his research, singling out com­mer­cial interior pro­jects (RCP in Par­nell, with its semi-industrial aes­thetic orches­trated by RTA Stu­dio, was one) that he thought inter­est­ing. The rationale behind the clinic design was to cre­ate a sense of com­fort and con­fid­ence. The design chal­lenge was to take the ele­ments Sharma liked and find a treat­ment appro­pri­ate to the space.

Recep­tion look­ing towards con­sulta­tion rooms.

That space, how­ever, when empty, was not par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing. There was no her­it­age value, and, says Dor­ring­ton, the only thing really going for it was the “ceil­ing height and a big old oak tree” out­side the win­dow. There were also budget con­straints, so cer­tain treat­ments weren’t pos­sible. How­ever, from adversity arises innov­a­tion. The archi­tects, with Sharma’s assent, treated the clinic’s exam rooms and recep­tion desk as four indi­vidual objects within the space, uni­fied under a dis­tinct­ive ceil­ing treatment.

The clinic's reception.

“Effect­ively we treated it as one big room,” says Atcheson, “with a series of fins over the top of a series of objects that are related but sit­ting more loosely. The rooms have subtly dif­fer­ent heights and angles, and the rec­ti­lin­ear recep­tion desk is placed on an angle to rein­force this idea.”

Under the ceil­ing of the clinic, and across the tops of the rooms and com­mon areas, runs a series of undu­lat­ing wooden fins that define the space without mak­ing it feel com­pressed. The slots between the fins offer just a peek at what lies bey­ond. Says Dor­ring­ton, “ Every decision we made was based on the most effi­cient way of doing some­thing – hence the use of strand board on the ceil­ing, which usu­ally goes unseen under floor cov­er­ings such as car­pet. It’s not gen­er­ally a fin­ish mater­ial. We looked at using ply­wood but the inher­ent grain meant mar­ry­ing joins incon­spicu­ously was a prob­lem. Strand board has no grain.”

Wait­ing area.

Lay­out plan.

3D per­spect­ive.

3D per­spect­ive.

The fins are func­tional and a strong visual ele­ment, but they also conrib­ute warmth, which goes some way to achiev­ing the ‘res­id­en­tial feel’ Sharma wanted. Custom-built ply­wood fur­niture in the exam rooms fur­thers this nat­ural warmth. The eco-ply beds in these two rooms con­tain built-in stor­age and nifty pop-out shelves, while the car­pet and hand basins seem more house-related than health-related. Aside from the sur­gery, which as far as I can tell has all the neces­sary accoutre­ments one would asso­ci­ate with such a place, there is little here that is medi­cinal.
The fur­niture in the recep­tion is also typ­ic­ally res­id­en­tial. I won­der if it took all of Sharma’s resolve to avoid tak­ing the fem­in­ine meta­phor to the nth degree by adding some ‘Womb’ chairs.
Des­pite the client's pre-design pre­dis­pos­i­tion to the semi-industrial, the res­ult here makes only subtle nods to that aes­thetic: pol­ished con­crete floors, irreg­u­larly posi­tioned dolly lights and glimpses of inner work­ings through the ceil­ing fins. This design is refined rather than semi– indus­trial; a col­lec­tion of well-fitted parts.
Cli­ent Q+A: Dr Anil Sharma.
ProDesign// What was your brief to the archi­tects?
Anil Sharma// From memory, fem­in­ine, friendly, warm, relax­ing, dif­fer­ent, open, not too weird…

PD// Why look bey­ond the typ­ical med­ical aes­thetic?
AS// There are many reas­ons this type of fit-out appealed to me. The over­rid­ing one was that I have to work there for the next 15 – 20 years and will spend at least two to three days a week there. I wanted some­thing ori­ginal that I had a hand in mak­ing. Other issues included the pro­vi­sion of a dif­fer­ent aes­thetic to people – patients, their kin and friends – who in many other ways are demand­ing a bet­ter bal­ance between form and func­tion. I see patients of all ages and the responses so far have vin­dic­ated the vis­ion. I wanted to provide a pleas­ant, relaxed space that held a new visitor’s interest and hope­fully alle­vi­ated some of their anxi­et­ies. I also wanted to make a pos­it­ive move away from the traditional.

PD// What were the influ­ences that led to this more overtly archi­tec­tural design? Had you vis­ited clin­ics with a sim­ilar treat­ment?
AS// No, I hadn't seen any­thing like this, although there is a place in Pon­sonby that has pods and is quite space age. I knew I wanted pol­ished con­crete floors and open ceil­ings. Tim and Sam sug­ges­ted wooden fins and pods. Unfor­tu­nately the budget and need for func­tion­al­ity did not allow mobile offices on wheels! My wife Rachel and I loved the strand board solu­tion, and we also wanted to pay a little homage to ply, as in the ply in Kiwi bach kit­chens, and hence the kit­chenette bench and patient exam couches in plywood.

Selec­ted Cred­its:
Cli­ent Dr Anil Sharma
Design­ers Tim Dor­ring­ton Archi­tects
Pro­ject man­ager Cemac Auck­land
Ser­vices con­sult­ant AFS Total Fire; APG Thompson
Glass work Glass Pro­jects
Win­dow treat­ments Mr Sparkle
Paint Meredith Paint­ing
Floor­ing Basic­ally Floors
Light­ing Team Cabling
IT Clique IT
Car­pets Irvine Inter­na­tional
Tex­tiles The Fab­ric Room
Sig­nage Signcraftsmen

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