Last month Synergy Architecture Studio met to reflect on their recent lobby designs for their multi-tenant medical office buildings in response to the ever-evolving nature of healthcare architecture. The discussion covered the complete anatomy of a lobby as designed by the team. The abridged discussion following explores the functional, sensory, and atmospheric qualities they seek when designing.
E: Before getting into the logic of our lobbies I wanted to briefly discuss the entry from the exterior as almost a preamble for what is inside. Form is often the most accessible part of architecture the public can discuss because of its objectivity with regards to style or personal taste. Especially in the United States where public art and architectural projects are highly scrutinized, the broader public questions the motives behind form in architectural works. While the histories of architectural styles, forms, and motives to build have been long documented, most of that documentation is Eurocentric and heavily based on accepted motives for construction such as places of worship for both gods and monarchs, recreation and learning, bathing and communal gathering, and then as we approach the twentieth century, industrial needs. In the United States that well recorded history is much briefer and the broader public often looks back at European based styles for reference. Here especially curved buildings seem to evoke suspicion. The layering of mass and surface on the Xchange building is notable for the single curved wall that faces its most public façades on the North and South.
M: Our buildings aren’t about investigating a single style. Their beauty is rooted in their honesty in response. Response to client needs, the community our built work serves, and the landscape they inhabit. The single curve is an exaggerated response to the landscape the building sits within. Passing the building parallel to the curve on the north is done at speed within a vehicle. You don’t necessarily feel the curve driving but the building forces you to notice and feel it. The house built for Dadaist artist Tristan Tzara in Paris has a similar feature. The facades of the homes adjacent to the Tzara house hit the curve at a tangent, only the Tzara house follows the slight curve and as a pedestrian walking parallel to the street it requires you to recognize the curve and reminds you of the landscape and your connectivity to the city. With our building the interior rooms then must follow that slight curve. It is a gesture that provides recognition to where you are in the landscape even from within the building. To the South it is an act of embrace as you approach the building at the speed of a pedestrian. The curve draws your eyes across it. Your focus lowers and as you come nearer the canopy becomes framed, then the vestibule is introduced, and you are welcomed inside.
P: That vestibule, the transitional space, is inhabited so briefly but it is important. It is the first point of transition from exterior to interior. It provides a moment of relief from humidity. It can be a place to wait momentarily for the car to pick you up. It’s shelter from winter wind. It’s a threshold and is an interior space that brings you in from outside. This is often why exterior building materials follow through into the vestibule. It’s not necessarily for theatrics, but it does add something to the drama or atmosphere of the lobby. The vestibule brings you down low. The space is compressed. The temperature becomes controlled, and views go from wide open, to framed. The entering the lobby the ceiling height rises, the views again become more open. The materials change and become more tactile and inviting.
M: For many years that is how the entire public lobby in a medical building has been treated as well. As a threshold space. An ‘in between’ from arriving at the front door and the provider front desk a patient is looking for. With the expansion of services providers are now able to offer such as out-patient ambulatory surgeries and procedures and the flexibility of how we can work, shop, and simply live the role of the lobby has expanded.
It’s now a place for patients to wait in-between appointments from different providers within the same building. A place of relief. It’s a place for a family member to wait and read, or even shop or virtually run their errands on a device while their partner has a procedure. A place to take that conference call you thought you might have missed. It’s a place of opportunity.
And our lobbies are organized now as such. We provide immediate visuals of circulation. The elevator is visible from the vestibule. The stairs are sculptural and incredibly functional. There is then a mix of short-term communal seating and more relaxed private seating. Places to work or to even to listen to music. Materials that are familiar and welcoming. Wood and fabrics. Abundant but gentler ambient lighting like you would have in your home. Surfaces that appeal to both visual and physical touch that are familiar but perhaps in a form that is unexpected but whose function is easily recognizable such as the inset seating in the Lakeville Specialty Center lobby. The curved wood wall that visually directs you deeper into the lobby also holds small seating nooks that provide a more intimate seating arrangement in a very public space and is part of the building architecture, not just a furniture piece.
E: The lobby is still a space for re-direction though.
M: Even with its new responsibilities, it does still need to function as a heart. It must redirect and deliver you. Xchange does this particularly well. The interior forms and floors are notched to visually and physically connect the two-story lobby. The openings frame views in a way that provides ample place to pause, and redirect. Your view is shifted left, right, up, and then offset deep into the space. On the second floor after exiting the elevator or reaching the top of the open stairs, it is the same condition. The space between the stairs and the seating provides a moment to physically pause, then re-direct your gaze around the opening in the floor and see the suite entries clearly defined. It’s also about providing ample room to allow for that pause. It’s efficient and effective because whether visiting for the first time or returning there is space that is dedicated to cross traffic and cross views without impeding one another.
E: The function is what is beautiful. It’s reinforced atmospherically with the materials selected but first there is the function. Consider a bird. They are beautiful because they are pure function. Furthermore, every attribute of the bird has two functions. Their feathers to keep warm, shed water, aid flight and yet bold enough to attract a mate. Their bones hollow to remain lite yet provide remarkable rigidity. They are beautiful in flight, but the mechanics behind their motion are also beautiful. This is how not only our buildings, but our lobbies in particular function. The stairs are sculptural to attract the view and to also provide a patient with the knowledge another space exists above or below before they even approach. It is open to define a path between here and there while maintaining visual of where you have come from, so you are aware of where to return when departing.
P: Departing. Also, an important part of the lobby. Again, Lakeville Specialty does this remarkably well. There is a smaller seating area that is part of the lobby next to the vestibule. It’s slightly more private, provides a view of the canopy that covers the building drop-off and pick-up, and is the perfect place to sit after your procedure while your partner runs out to bring the car around out of the snow.
M: Then you’re back through the vestibule where you began. This time the exterior building materials that were brought inside welcome you back outside.
