Giattina Aycock Architecture Studio Interiors Projects
EMERGENCY PET CLINIC
This design-build project challenged designers to convert a typical suburban house into a 24-hour Emergency Pet Clinic; more than doubling its square footage and adding client parking while simultaneously preserving the site’s wooded character and improving the building’s visibility from a nearby major road.
With a very tight budget, the architects designed a new form to arise from the old, creating a unified facility with a functional, seamless floor plan. From the main road, the resulting building presents itself as a public space, visible and accessible day and night.
Perched on a pedestal of exposed architectural concrete, the building’s new façade is a simple composition of glass, steel, corrugated metal and cypress siding. The new roof is steeply sloped with sizeable overhanging eaves. Parking is pushed back into the site and, upon approach, the waiting room presents itself as a glass box among trees. A series of playfully colored steel columns support a canopy which defines the entry as a modern version of a traditional front porch and helps obscure the existing asphalt roof.
Natural cypress siding wraps the building on the south and east sides and serves as a backdrop for the covered entrance. The cypress wall continues from outside in, leading visitors into the glass waiting room where finishes are otherwise sparse, and outward views dominate. Five adjacent exam rooms separate the public space from surgery and treatment areas, while translucent polycarbonate economically filters daylight from skylights above.
The resulting composition of old and new structures relating to their site produces a cohesive place, integrating the vestiges of the existing residential house into a modern, professional facility in a peaceful, natural setting.
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