17th Ave Clinic

17th Avenue Clinic is a health-oriented commercial building centred around a purpose-designed skin clinic. The building features three clinics [medical dermatology, aesthetic, and rheumatology] at the second storey level and retail units at grade, on top of underground parking. Deceptively simple in form, the clinic derives its articulation from the modulation of light, privacy and transparency. Its central light well, flared roofline, reaching clearstorey, cutaway corner decks, impervious central concrete band and articulated open glass and concrete bays at grade all contribute to a highly tuned envelope. This system elevates program often relegated to the standard strip malls populating neighbouring lots. The clinic’s tripartite building facade starts with a sequence of concrete columns that demarcate entrances to commercial spaces at grade including the principal entrance to the clinic, defined by a series of striated recessing concrete walls. A middle 3.5m tall concrete band acts as a privacy veil for the clinic and its patrons and supports a large-span, 11-foot tall, egg-crate like, cross laminated timber roof structure. The clinic is a new take on an old typology of a suburban medical building. Most commercial buildings on busy suburban thoroughfares seem temporary — cheap containers for an ever-changing mix of tenants. With its sculpted form and material palette of timber beams and deeply grooved concrete, the 17th Avenue Clinic conveys a different message — that developer-built structures can have heft and substance, grace and subtlety. Behind the clinic’s facade, tall beams define a datum / threshold at 7 feet above floor level and are used as both a space defining tool and an acoustic separation between different functions. The wood ceiling slopes upwards towards the building perimeter to softly ‘invite’ natural light into the building. The effect creates natural, orderly divisions and organic progressions between treatment rooms, circulation space, lobbies and a luminous 2-storey interior courtyard. Located centrally, connecting all lobbies, a 4 storey courtyard is the interior centrepiece, further inviting sunlight deep into the floor plates — from underground parking to the top floor, transforming the building’s inner experience for visitors from the very first point of arrival. High coffered ceilings combined with the mechanical system and natural air convection take advantage of stratification, increasing comfort in the space occupied by patients and staff.