Dr. BC Dental Clinic
BC Dental is a dental clinic located in a new development area of Ankara in a high-rise building. BC Dental is a single floor facility whose design is highly influenced by its plot. Being of an atypical nature, the wide U-shape plan is dissected from the middle through the entrance into two main zones. One being completely devoted to the health services the clinic offers through its main façade facing three adult clinic boxes, one child clinic box, a doctor’s office and lavatory, a meeting room, and medico-technic rooms. While the other hosts the waiting lounge, lavatories, staff dressing room, and a kitchen. The design team’s main concern was not to fall in systematic symmetry. Therefore, they supported this decision by creating border parallels and using the irregular corridor surfaces as vividly rhythmic and versatile spaces. The various ambiances lead one to believe that it is not one sole space, but many.
Rhythm often rhymes with irregularity and fluidity. In BC Dental, all regular aspects are replaced by rather outstanding ones. For instance, all edgy corners are softened into smooth ones to boost fluidity together with the lighting systems that implicitly guide the users in the space. The experience is also enhanced through the surface variations of walls. An almost-theatrical aspect is granted to the clinic boxes through augmenting their transparency and delimiting their borders by short, neat, solid walls that stand back to shed light on their monumentality. The transparency approach being highly encouraged by the clinic’s owners, the design brings to the front classically-neglected vital elements of health facilities, like the positioning of the sterilization room at the foreground in a fully translucent and continuous façade that greets patients at the entrance and remains in their sight during the wait.
The waiting experience itself is elevated by creating variations of seating at the waiting lounge. This decision is motivated by the sanitary emergency that stemmed in the Covid19 crisis. Various assortments have been arranged to subtly encourage social distancing and to also involve the patients in deciding the kind of activity they intend to carry while waiting. The design thus grants patients who would rather socialize a stunning setting enriched by greenery and a sumptuous dark ambiance with a distinguished lighting design. Those however who would rather make their spare time profitable by carrying out work-related tasks or taking phone calls are assigned a rather isolated spaces with technological niches to help them do so. The use of niches is omnipresent to create different environments in one space. The surface is fully optimized and the color scheme adopted speaks loud in this respect. Dark and light elements collude abruptly in single visual perspectives and give very pleasing illusions and dimension to the clinic. Being candidly user-oriented, the design includes the little ones as well. In the tooth-brushing section, two washbasins stand one next to the other in two sizes. One is destined to the adult patients and the other is adapted to the younger patients.
The presence of intriguingly colossal structural columns disrupt the space which pushed the design team to generate creative solutions to use the space intelligently. One way to do that is by taming their brutal effects and have them entirely hidden by forming utility spaces like small medico-technic rooms and niches that lodge in-box storage or even a wall library by the waiting lounge. These hideous structural elements are therefore embraced rather than pushed over and used to make BC Dental even more rhythmic, yet harmonious.
