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Architects: Shift architecture urbanism
- Area: 292 m²
- Year: 2011
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Photographs:Rene de Wit
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Contractor: Van der Weegen Bouwgroep, Tilburg
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Text description provided by the architects. The task of this project was to transform and extend an historical house in the centre of Best, a village in the south of The Netherlands, into a dental practice with four treatment rooms. The central question was how the extension responds to the existing architecture and how it profits from the green setting.
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The four new treatment rooms are situated in a new volume that at the same time mimics and contrasts the existing house. Its archetypical volume is derived from the existing house – it takes over the exact same inclination of the pitched roof - while it is being materialized in a very different material. Both the roof and the facades of the extension are clad with zinc. This strengthens the iconic quality of the archetype and renders the new extension into a "contextual alien" that blends into the rural surroundings and at the same time creates a clear new landmark that expresses its new function.
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The new volume provides each treatment room with an archetypical space of a miniature house. Its high ridge and steep ceiling results in a vertical space that connects to the perspective of a patient in the dentist chair. A roof light in each treatment room enables the patients to relate with the outside, even during treatment. A large ‘flower window’, that also serves as a bench, floods the rooms with daylight and provides both the staff and their patients with a framed view of the surrounding green.
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All secundairy functions of the densist practice are positioned in the existing house without harming its structure and typical 1930’s details. The patient enters and waits in a homely and familiar atmosphere that, together with the experience of the surrounding garden from the extension, makes the necessary visit to the dentist in a (slightly) more comforting experience.
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