Design Crew
Sat, 8 Oct 2011
Got a problem? Need some help? Just standing there shaking your head? Don't know what to do? You're not alone. Send us a link to photos of your design quandary and let the Desire to Inspire design crew help you .... that's you lot ... the readers! Emma emailed with something a little different.
I am about to bite the bullet and buy some rooms to practice from. I work doing mostly psychotherapy with parents of babies and young children and other adult patients. I have tried to look up some design plans for psychiatrists offices and have hit a blank.
As an additional challenge, the space I am looking at has 5 metre ceilings, a lot of glass at the front and I need to think of acoustics and privacy.....I was thinking rooms within rooms. It needs to be a welcoming and calming space....but not "seductive" if you know what I mean. Even though we need to cater for children who may come along with their parents on occasions I do not want it looking like cartoon vomit (if you know what I mean)
Can you or your readers help me with some suggestions to this pretty major challenge! (More after the jump.)
The immediate idea that pops into my head is to keep the consulting spaces as separate boxes. The boxes are cubes or rectangular prisms, children's building blocks arranged "haphazardly" at angles to each other (of course not at all haphazard but strictly designed to maximise usable space) with emphasis on positive and negative space. Solid blocks "plonked" in open high ceilinged space but not all the way to the ceiling which is darkened or patterned. Timber boxes in a dark space with intimate and task orientated lighting hanging from the ceilings in the "open" spaces. The building block offices warm and professional, visually and acoustically private. If the wall of glass needs to also provide privacy then this is done through pattern placed on the windows by say film or by perforated panels of wood or metal. If the open space is dark and sedate then the blocks are patterned over a rich timber veneer or plain wooden boxes in a riot of surface pattern in the open spaces. Not necessarily bright and in your face but tonal. Play the positive against the negative. Here are some inspiration pics of wooden blocks that are not too cartoon vomity.
Ok I'll stop now. It's your turn. (Block inspiration from MUJI and Aleaxander Girard Blocks.)
Reader Comments (11)
...Mezzanine consulting spaces?? with lots of timber? And keeping as much natural light as possible, maybe do frosted banding or some frosted grafik motif on the glass to add privacy but not lose light?
Hi Emma
A few years ago I bought and refurbished my own psychoanalytic room - it's not an easy job, I know.
I'm not sure how many rooms you want to make out of your space, nor what your budget might be, so it's difficult to give practical suggestions. My first thought on reading your idea was that it sounded interesting but I did have questions about whether such an overtly 'designed' or unconventional space might intrude into the work. I wondered about lowering the ceiling for the whole space, and having rooms leading off hallway within. Or if a lowered ceiling would be impossible near the windows, then keep that bit full height and use it as the reception?
As for the windows, I think privacy would be a good thing. My waiting room abutted a busy corridor and had floor to ceiling windows in several sections, which I had covered with semi-opaque film that let light and some sense of movement through. I was advised to keep a narrow band of clear glass around the edge of each section and this turned out to be good advice - nothing could be identifiably seen in the waiting room from outside but the small bands of clear glass somehow stopped the whole thing feeling claustrophobic. I had a colleague with a similar window issue and she had them covered in soft, translucent voile. For my part I thought it looked a little too much like a living room. Someone else I know had venetian blinds custom made and those worked well.
I found colour to be a very important component in my room. Quite a lot of my colleagues went for safe, blinding white, and it was harsh. I ended up, after much agonising, painting my walls in a dirty neutral (Murobond's Alto) which suggested shadow, and had suede chairs and a dark brown leather couch, with a dirty red persian rug. I found that any introduction of black immediately hardened the space (and I am a BIG lover of black ordinarily).
Good luck. I hope it works out well for you.
PP
This is undoubtedly a prank question and I'm really surprised that DTI would take it seriously. No legitimate psychotherapist looking at a couple thousand square feet of raw space that needs to be built out from the the floor up turns to a blog for "advice."
Ridiculous!
The need of your patients for privacy will not support an open ceiling system. And while children would appreciate a waiting area full of light, if your offices will be openly marked as psychiatric services, the parents will again, be uncomfortable with the idea of being visible. So, the front windows will need to offer some privacy - there are a number of window clings in elegant designs and jewel tones that would work.
I should think, if you want your patients to be able to keep their minds on therapy, that the children will need to be - well, safely corralled. I'm going to go ahead and assume that you will have a teenaged employee in charge of a playroom. So you'll need a soft playzone and a play crib for infants, a table, toy storage, a bookshelf and a comfortable seating zone, a train table (MUST HAVE) and a play kitchen. That would be the front of the room, barricaded from the door - think up-scaled playzone at a department store! You'll need to expand one of your bathrooms to 'family-size'.
Dropping the ceiling is one way to go - another way might be to build comfortable consulting rooms with ceilings, set akimbo at the farthest end, and top them with outsized block shapes - Jo offers a wonderful sample selection! - and point them up with muted, colored spot lighting, from several directions. You get interest and yet a calm feeling. Add long banners in the children's area to break up the height, yet leave it open. Some block shapes suspended in the air - and marching around the low corral wall - would also tie the spaces together. The work offices could be the buffer between the children's zone and the consulting area, and be left as walls - but maybe with the occasional large 3-D shape set into a wall?
I love the idea of timbered boxes, the raised edges stained dark, like retro, adult building blocks. I can see the long lines of the lights coming down, little amber cones delivering light exactly where it's needed! I think the building block idea is really evocative - that's what you'll be trying to do, after all, give people the building blocks on which to create a more stable life.
Good luck - and please, be the first to actually send pics of your finished space - nobody else we've offered advice to ever has!
I'm linking a funtional interior and in a close scale. It seems high above the ground level and foreign to you though.
http://www.nendo.jp/en/works/detail.php?g=interior&t=166
Have you seen the film Tinket Tailor Soldier Spy? In this film they had these secure rooms, like enclosed boxes that were completely soundproofed and safe looking, within a bigger space. That's the first thing that came into my mind when I read your post and saw the space.
On another note, whether or not it's actually true really doesn't bother me, I think it's a really interesting concept.
My advice would be to hire a professional commercial interior designer. One with experience in this type of space - understands the functions, spacial requirements, applicable codes, lighting etc.
I adore this site and think these features are wonderful - but this one raises a huge flag for me and I'm surprised it was posted. This question is very different from a residential room layout/paint color etc question. Licensed/registered commercial interior designers (and architects they work with) have years of experience and education that address people's physical and aesthetic needs, safety and required codes, the psychological effects space/color can have, commercial-grade materials and the correct way to use them, lighting, acoustics, etc.
Perhaps you were just asking for advice to start brainstorming before hiring a professional and I apologize if that's the case. It's great to have input from others and for those that give advice it's something different from the norm (plusthat way you're ready with goals/ideas when you do meet with a professional).
As a commercial interior designer, I appreciate this site for the wonderful residential features - but (clearly) get a little concerned when you move into the commercial realm:)
Got a problem? No problem with the design crew. Excellent job!
Alissa - if this was true, and ever put into practice, why do we constantly walk into the bland, cold, heartless offices that are stamped "professionally approved"? Coming here gets suggestions from people with a human, rather than a corporate outlook.
The lack of any info posters and other clues on the walls, seems like an important lead. But arty details ecco all over the building, branding it; Sorry if the scale is much larger than an urban clinic, here's the link
http://www.antoniovillas.com/altri/maddalena/index.htm
Signs like quiet room also handle people very gently and I've seen it on another center.
Thankyou Jo, I Love your ideas, and those blocks could be a fabulous basis for colours and design.
To clarify, I turned to the blog for ideas before I will consult a professional. I haven't bought this place, but thought this could be a design challenge, and wondered about its design feasibility.
In the town where this office is, a major issue is zoning. Not all office space is available to me, the council has to have marked it as for medical use, and this is very restrictive. This office space has a possibility of getting this medical zoning. It is also in a very splendid location with lake frontage.
To answer Lin and Alissa, if one doesn't have a start on one's own ideas, then what can the professional do for you? Would you, for example, go to a hairdresser and say....do whatever you would like to my hair, I have no ideas!
I am looking for something a bit different, but also workable. Privacy and acoustics are very important considerations. To answer Oregonbird, the therapy for some parents and infants involves having the infant in mind and therefore in the room too, my office can be a playroom! Psychotherapy rooms can't be too living-roomy (or bedroomy....which is an issue for people who have converted suburban houses), but neither should they look like a dreary office. They should be welcoming and comforting, but also fire imagination (although I do take Pimpmybricks advice over the room itself becoming too intrusive). I was really hoping to find a lovely big interior design picture book on the subject.....There isn't, but maybe there should be!
Thankyou so much everybody. I will chase up all these super leads and will let you know if I get this space, and then some "after" photos!
Cheers
Emma