The building, which is undergoing renovation, is located at Lübbertorwall 12, Herford, Germany and has housed a dental practice for decades. The project aims to reconstruct the building to modernize the visitor experience, add a distinctive visual identity and preserve the sense of history. The design’s goal is combining the confidence that a decade-old practice gives patients with the message that they can rely on high-quality modern service and contemporary technology. The intervention fully preserves the exterior of the building and builds on its rich ornamentation, conveying it into the interior in a restrained and aesthetically pleasing manner. In the areas where the possibility of intervention was greater, purely modern forms and techniques were used.
Upon entering the entrance space, visitors have instant visual contact with the reception, where they are welcomed. After their initial communication, they can be directed to the waiting room, located to the left of the entrance, or to one of the three manipulation rooms. The visual connection between the individual open spaces that link the manipulation rooms makes it possible for the visitor's eye to simultaneously see two or more visual planes covering the depths of different rooms.
The practical need for mirrors has been developed into a highly distinctive aesthetic element throughout the project, with mirrors being placed both in unison with the classical decorative elements and as an accent, but always in a characteristic symbiosis with the furnishings and lighting to maximise the aesthetic effect of various objects in the interior. Lighting plays a dual role both in terms of work and as a means of placing a focus on the attention of the visitors, "pointing" to places of importance or to the comfortable waiting areas. Decorative lighting serves as a signpost for visitors, attracting attention with a characteristic material to stand out against the background of the walls.
The ceiling certainly comes into the focus of the visitor at least once during his visit to the clinic and is therefore an important element of the interior design. The characteristic structure of the ceiling, which is on a smaller scale than the classical ornaments on the walls, allows it to play both a background role when visitors pass through the rooms without noticing its detail, and an accent when the focus of the person's gaze is directed upwards and there is enough time to adapt to the smaller scale. The lattices, designed specifically to cover the radiators, are a reflection of the same detail and contribute to the overall thematic connection of the various elements of the interior.
Elements of the building's history have been preserved, the most distinctive of which is the wooden arch, which to this day plays a role in maintaining the general vintage feel in the common space. Numerous rooms have also been developed for the normal functioning of the clinic - laboratory, X-ray and office. They often remain out of the visitor's focus, but they concentrate an unavoidably large volume of technical development.
