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The pediatric dental practice as a typology imposes specific programmatic and sequential requirements based on its operational flows. The project considers this and proposes to balance the conventions of health care delivery with a fun and immersive architectural experience. 

The plan organization follows the placement of a bespoke object within a nondescript shell, and the resulting spaces that define patient engagement. This central core holds all enclosed rooms for staff and caregivers, including doctors’ rooms, imaging, and administration. A generous back-of-house provides quick access between rooms and allows for a space to rest, reflect and do notetaking. 

 

The patient areas flow around the core in a tripartite plan, based on three programmatic focal points - reception, dental exam, and treatment. With its angled positioning, patients experience the space through carefully curated moments of privacy and intimacy within the broader communal space. 

 

Just as the plan layout orchestrates a comingling of activities, so does the overarching dazzle supergraphic – visually stitching the interstitial zones in between the programmatic elements. Dazzle, or razzle dazzle, was a unique form of camouflage for WWI ships that disrupted their outlines with a pattern of high-contrast intersecting geometric shapes – making them a difficult target with ambiguous distance, speed, and direction. 

 

Deployed here, it strategically flattens the core and shell into an immersive spatial experience activated through movement that hopes to offer a novel outlook on the typically sterile healthcare aesthetic and engage the imagination and curiosity of its young constituents. It gradually builds up through the strategic massing expression of a lenticular surface and the curation of healthcare-grade building materials, layered with custom illustrations of local flora, that snap together to give the project a cohesive reading.

 

Photography by ©Fotoworks/Benny Chan