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Obata-clinic

About

This project is a plan for moving and reopening an internal clinic in a shopping mall on the outskirts of Hiroshima. The shopping mall has a high ceiling and, therefore, so does the clinic that occupies space within it. The clinic’s surrounding corridors are bustling with shoppers.

The client requested to make good use of the high ceiling. However, keeping the open space increases the risk of heating/cooling and ventilation problems. So we inclined the ceiling to intonate the height, and we controlled the room space to adjust the volume of the room. Furthermore, we made all the walls the same height and created space in between the walls and the ceiling like a partition style. This showed the ceiling as “a big roof” spanning all rooms and so giving the space depth, brightness and a comfortable feeling. In considering the privacy of people coming into the clinic, we managed, without closing the facade, to arrange each room to allow in light but yet in such a way to stop the direct view of outsiders.

In total, it looks like a wooden Kura (a traditional Japanese storehouse), but we feel that this magnanimous space gives people repose and comfort.

Dalseth Family Dental Clinic

The announcement that “we’re going to the dentist today” arouses dread in most families. No wonder. While awaiting the potential screech of the drill, nervous patients are typically sequestered in banal, glaring, or dimly lit waiting rooms amid the constant buzz of dental equipment.

Dr. Stephen Dalseth set out to change all that. His dental practice had been thriving for 30 years in Apple Valley, a Minneapolis suburb. But when his son joined the three-dentist group, he seized the chance to rethink the standard approach.

Clinica Zaldivar - Plastic Surgery

Clinica Zaldivar is a unique building type in Central America, offering plastic surgery and skin rejuvenation procedures, located in the neighborhood San Benito, one of the most important and recognized in San Salvador, El Salvador.  The exterior is kept to a limited material palette, where forms and spaces can be more deeply discovered, allowing for planes to achieve complex spatial effects, where surfaces flow continuously. The design contrasts smooth monotonous walls with a textured rustic perimeter of exposed architectural concrete walls. As one enters the clinic one is greeted by a water wall where water cascades down beside a reflecting pool. Strategically placed are skylights and vertical wood panels which block patient circulation areas, creating interesting shadows.

Working within the existing 600 square meter facility,  Clinica Zaldivar offers multiple VIP entries, allowing inconspicuous arrivals, personalized attention, and retreat from the outside world to relax and recover in luxurious accommodations.  The clinic has two state-of the-art operating rooms with recovery areas, 2 private recovery rooms for overnight stay, a doctor's change room, 2 consultation rooms where patients are educated about their upcoming procedures through LED touch screen monitors, physician's office, a common waiting area and a private waiting area for patient’s family members, administrative areas, along with staff support areas and a medical spa, where patients can receive different skin treatments and rejuvenation treatments.  Visitors can also experience waiting at the exterior plaza where one is surrounded by tall walls with different textures and a metallic wall that is partially embedded into a cantilevered wall made of exposed architectural concrete.  The metallic wall has vertical, staggered perforations where the creation of shadows is cast by the sun’s movements. This detail captures one sense of a tall sculpture of large proportions, also allowing privacy and relaxation, where one can enjoy the reflecting pool and ambient music giving a sensation of freshness and serenity.

Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center

Milstein Hospital is NewYork-Presbyterian’s main inpatient facility. When it opened in 1988, its operating rooms were state-of-the-art, and over the years they have become some of the busiest in the U.S. More than 100 operations may be performed in its 26-room surgical suite in the course of a day.

Surgery and patient care have evolved at light speed since the building opened, thanks in part to new techniques developed in this hospital. Diagnostics machines and complex surgical procedures that would have been considered science fiction when the building opened are common today and continue to advance rapidly.

But to keep leading the way, Milstein needed new kinds of spaces — for example, hybrid operating rooms that could quickly change from noninvasive to invasive surgery if a patient had problems in the midst of a seemingly routine procedure.

The site of the new Vivian and Seymour Milstein Family Heart Center was carved out of a schist outcropping so large it was considered unusable until the real estate became too valuable to ignore. The addition fills a void between Milstein Hospital and the Herbert Irving Pavilion, an early 1960s vintage medical office building.

Patients and visitors can gain access to the Heart Center via its entrance on a side street, which is somewhat private and gives the center its own identity, or they can enter by way of Milstein Hospital’s more public main lobby (considered the addition’s first level) and through a compact but beautifully daylit four-story atrium. It is spanned by bridges on three levels, connecting Irving to Milstein.

The new facility packs a tremendous amount into a small space. A conference center with prefunction space, an auditorium and four meeting rooms, is located on the first level. Labs and radiology occupy the level below the conference center, and a cath lab is located on level two. Eight new operating rooms have been added on the third level, and diagnostics, such as echocardiograms, are performed on level four. On level five, 20 ICU rooms have been added. Functions on all these floors have been seamlessly integrated into the existing hospital, while its circulation was improved.

Northwest community hospital

 An eight-story, 225,000-square-foot addition to the hospital, with an 11,000-square-foot lobby, an emergency department, intensive care, private patient rooms, and medical/surgical and perinatal units.

 The architects sought to enhance both the safety and privacy of patients while standardizing rooms for ease of care. The triangular form of the tower—whose sharp tip stands in counterpoint to the hospital's International Style campus—shortens travel distances for staff. To boost efficiency and flexibility, each room is a standard size, with a consistent layout, and is equipped to serve intensive-care patients and regular medical patients, depending on need. All patient rooms in the addition are private; staff pausing to wash their hands at sinks outside the rooms can see patients through windows without disrupting them. Patient rooms feature full-height windows, as do the ends of corridors, and each floor has a disabled-accessible balcony. Wood ceilings and millwork contribute to natural feel of the interior

National Intrepid Center of Excellence

A two-story, 72,000-square-foot facility for traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients at Bethesda's National Naval Medical Center. The project includes clinics; imaging facilities; spaces for physical therapy, outdoor rehabilitation, and virtual-reality-assisted rehab; offices; an auditorium; a patient lounge and coffee bar; and a skylit multipurpose space that can host activities ranging from group exercises to theater performances.

 The architects needed to accommodate a wide variety of programs under one roof, while creating flexible spaces that can adapt to the center's evolving needs as new findings about TBI emerge. They concentrated the diagnostic, treatment, and support spaces in an L-shaped wing whose legs bracket the main lobby and circulation area. In keeping with the largely concrete Bethesda campus, SmithGroup clad the center in sandy-hued precast concrete panels with a curtain wall. At the lobby, the curtain wall takes on a serpentine shape, its curves echoed on the interior by a freestanding wood-clad enclosure that houses physical therapy, the auditorium, and the chapel. The center's imaging suite anticipates changes in technology and equipment with ten-foot knockout panels. In addition, the architects allotted extra space—currently used for research—to the suite so that it can add an upgraded MRI or hyperbaric chamber in the future.