Architecture - Dental Office

muffinpunk787 · June 16, 2007

For my Architecture III class we have to create a plan for a dental office. There is a large packet listing out the guidlines.. which would take a long time to type here so I think I'll refrain I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas as to good efficent layouts for a Dentist's office.

Here are the basic guidlines.
-No larger than 3500 square feet
-It will be located between another buisiness and a residential neighborhood
-There need to be 8 chairs

Also part of the assignment is to include 'Green Building' or using enviromentally friendly materials, designs, etc. Any ideas or techniques for this?

Thanks for everyone ideas and help!

Jasoncw · June 16, 2007

Ok, I don't know what the site looks like at all, but I would say this:

Skylights for the rooms would be green, and would be nice for the patients to look up to, and could save on electricity bills (I don't know if the free light overcomes the more expensive heating/cooling though).

For the rooms, don't have "rooms" with "doors" but have the spaced just defined by some walls that add some privacy. Doors are bad because they'll want to move their equipment around, and will want to move quickly between rooms, and be able to communicate with each other from between rooms. Doors just get in the way of all that. More open space is preferable, but patients will want privacy. So just pay attention to the sight lines and the sense of privacy when you design the rooms. The more open layout could also be helpful for heating and cooling purposes (I don't really know).

For the rooms, imagine there's a hallway with rooms in it. Then imagine that the corners of the rooms on the hallway side were removed, so that the entrances to each room was the corner of the room. That's how my dentist is and I think it works well.

For the outside, I don't know what kind of area it is, but if it's appropriate, put a nice big window on the front. Then include blinds and plants inside to provide some privacy.

Design the building so that it could easily be expanded or converted, and put that into the environmentally friendly part of your spiel, because in the future it will be more practical to re-use your building.

For the employees, make sure their area is separate and private. They probably want to be "away" from their job while eating lunch or whatever.

Well, those are my thoughts, hopefully they're helpful.

Sim_BOB · June 16, 2007

dont forget the fish tank!

Jasoncw · June 16, 2007

Yes! That's right! Definitely do not forget the fish tank. That is something that is easy to forget but is very important.

I also think that it would impress who you're presenting to if you mentioned that detail.

Sim_BOB · June 16, 2007

Don't forget a sink in the area before the room with all the chairs so you can brush before your dentists tells you to work on your brushing

topcliff · June 16, 2007

I reccomend you do what my dentist does (orthodontist, actually): Have a waiting room with rows of skylights over the seating area, a wrap around front desk to allow more space, a small hallway with a room off to both sides for patients, employees, and records. Lastly, instead of individual rooms for each chair, go green and put all the chairs in the same room in a big circle for more space. That's just me, anyway. TopCliff

Odainsaker · June 17, 2007

You might also consider the sequence of events in laying out the program:

1 Of course, there is always the waiting room for torture victims to contemplate their looming fates as well as their chauffeur families. Sound and visual barriers from the actual procedure areas may be desired both for medical privacy and to muffle panicking children, bleeders, or screamers.

2. Next comes the inpatient reception desk, where all the paperwork and insurance records and releases are collected. Storage for administrative patient medical and billing records needs to be readily available and accessible from here.

3. Upon summons, first stop is the X-Ray room, where the Death Beams are aimed into your mouth while the interns hide behind heavy protective shielding. An attendant photographic processing dark room is also needed here.

4. With the cheeks zapped, the next pitstop is the initial check-up and cleaning area, which does the higher volume and turnover of customers, and is where the doctor does the cursory inspection and passes the rest to the temporary college intern, who will do the actual basic procedure of setup and simple cleaning. There may be several such stations, even interconnected as different support interns monitor them collectively, and they need ready access to secured equipment and supply storage, cleaning/sanitaizing, disposal, and resupply stations.

5. For the unrepentant non-flossers, more intensive and time-consuming money-making care is offered in the Advanced Torture Chamber, where more specialized and controlled equipment for moldings and drillings and the happy gas are present. These also need easy and ready access to the medicial supply and service stations

6. Survivors are then ushered to the outpatient desk, where follow-up appointments and actual payments are made. This desk is usually run by the same administrative staff as the inpatient desk, and needs ready access to the same records. Oftentimes, this desk function may also be given a more private setting, as many customers prefer their medical payment details to be handled more discreetly than outfront in the public inpatient reception area.

7. Release to freedom back into the waiting room, where family chauffers must be waken up and the tattered old gossip and travel magazines put back on the shelves.

Most dentist offices I have suffered through tend to have this circular layout, where the procession of rooms actually wrap around a central core divided in the front for the administrative purposes and the back with active medical support/setup/supply functions. Much is dependant on the conditions of your site. Of course, there are other backroom functions involved, such as biomedical waste storage and disposal, back receiving areas, employee rooms, etc., which require their own pattern of progammatic layout to intersect with and run tangential to the customer path.

To be the green, your best bet will be with creatively conserving your particular site, choosing materials and construction types (no imported hardwood from the Amazon, or glass boxes in the desert), providing ample natural daylighting or supplemental daylighting where possible, while also providing enough building shading and venting to minimize cooling costs. Any dental/medical function may require a particular type of internal HVAC environment, controlled lighting, medical waste control, and water and power use that you may or may not be able to avoid. Existing off-the-shelf catalogue parts tend to be more economical than trying to re-engineer history's most elaborate heroic arch and custom fancy truss. Keep it simple.

Hope this helps. Of course, now you will have to show pictures of the ongoing progress...that is if you are ever allowed the time, hehe.

Odainsaker · June 17, 2007