Project material
- Category
- Commercial & Institutional
- Typology
- Interior design and renovation
- Year
- 2006
- Area
- 160 m²
- Program
- Dental clinic
- Location
- Bogotá
- City
- Bogotá, Cundinamarca
- Status
- Portfolio
Architectural concept for a dental clinic
OdontoÉlite is a specialized dental clinic in the Samsung Tower, in the financial district of northern Bogotá. The starting point was demanding: a small space, delivered as a bare shell, that had to hold a complex clinical program with open views over the city.
The answer was the concept of an open clinic: instead of enclosing each treatment room behind opaque walls, the project breaks the privacy conventions of the building type through continuous forms, layered glass skins, transparency, translucency and reflections. Three monolithic volumes clad in frosted glass organize the plan and play with light — glowing crowns, backlit bands, display cases — to project the image of cleanliness a clinic demands. The program is completed with two treatment typologies: open operatories separated by low translucent screens, and closed rooms for procedures that require more privacy.
It was the studio's first interior design and remodeling project, with a scope covering both design and construction of the clinic, and it became the office's own benchmark for healthcare spaces.
More about the project›
Odontoélite is an interior design and remodeling project that turns a small shell space into a dental clinic whose program is organized around the concept of the open practice.
The project uses interior-design and lighting elements that give the space a fresh, clean image; they stem from reflecting on the values and meanings behind dental procedures and materializing them through principles of order, cleanliness and sobriety in architecture.
Hierarchy elements: as a concept, three elements frame the architectural language inside the clinic and form the basis of its operation (asepsis, cleaning and filing spaces).
Lighting elements: an integrated lighting concept was developed in which the furniture and the adjacent wall and ceiling areas carry artificial light along continuous strips.
Two consultation typologies: understanding the specific needs of dental procedures, two independent patient-care zones were configured — an enclosed one for surgical procedures and an open one for regular visits.
Three glass monoliths order an open plan.
The first sketch drew no walls: it drew boxes. Faced with a small shell floor and a dense clinical program, the project was resolved by setting three monolithic volumes on the plan to concentrate served and service spaces, letting everything else flow around them. Skins were then layered onto those volumes — frosted glass, silkscreened bands, etched lettering — and the artificial light was tuned until every edge glowed. The built clinic keeps the literalness of that sketch: visitors move through the space skirting the same luminous prisms drawn on paper.
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Lighting elements: the plan highlights the pieces that carry built-in light, from the ceiling box of the central area to the washing island, so brightness accompanies every step of the clinical route.
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Elements of hierarchy and identity: the monolithic glass volumes mark the clinic's reference points and give it its own image.
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Open versus closed operatories: the plan contrasts the two treatment typologies, the shared open zone and the enclosed rooms reserved for private procedures.
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