This was a project to design a shared space in a newly built Kyoto clinic that focuses mainly on complete medical checkups for women.
The owner’s request was to create a comfortable space like a hotel that inspires visits by women, who tend to put off their regular health checkups.
The waiting area in the lobby is a place for patients to wait to check in at their first visit to the clinic. By arranging the sofas at random and placing artworks and displays here and there around the area, we aimed to make the face-on nature of the space more ambiguous, to create a place where people could relax like a lounge in an art gallery, rather than “just a place where you are made to wait.”
For the finishing of the room, we selected handmade washi paper, polished floors, mud walls, copper sheets, and unglazed tiles, each of which add warmth as long-familiar, handcrafted, unassuming items.
By composing the space with materials that enrich its expression without fading over time, we have gently blurred the boundaries between the functions of each space. We thought that this would allow the space to be somewhere that patients can spend time at peace, even when they come alone, and that they would be able to undergo their tests as relaxed as possible.
The adjacent toilet, the waiting room provided for receiving explanation about diagnostic results, and other areas also ensure calmness and a splendid, gentle brightness, like the above.
This facility aims to implement the latest medical devices to reduce testing times, with the target of creating shortcuts to early discovery, treatment, and recovery for diseases unique to women. We have aimed for a place that is easy for patients to visit and relaxes their minds and bodies, through the synergy of the interior and smooth testing.
Team:
Architects: Koyori
Photographer: Junichi Usui
Materials Used:
Main Structure: RC structure
Kurotani washi (Japanese paper): Wataru Hatano
Copper: Ryo Watanabe
Original light: New Light Pottery
Original sofa: Arc Co. ltd.
Down light: Modulex inc.
