Northstar Dermatology
Architect / Designer:
Studio:
Design Team:
Initial schematic and design development was done by AN.ONYMOUS in collaboration with Spinagu in 2019, and comprised of the following team members: Iman Ansari, Maxi Spina, Marta Nowak, Luiza De Souza, Wesley Evans, Lynn Hahm, Andrew Depew, Jiachen Wei, Wei Zou, Tingji Gavin Guo. The project subsequently underwent a comprehensive redesign and development between 2019 and 2022 by AN.ONYMOUS.
We extend our acknowledgment and appreciation to all individuals whose invaluable contributions throughout the various phases of the project’s evolution, from inception and initial design through redesign to construction, have been integral to the successful realization of this project.
Copyright:
Country:
Northstar Medical Campus is a 24,000 square-feet medical office development located in North Richland Hills, Texas. The three-acre campus comprises of three single-story medical office buildings arranged around a public plaza, as well as landscaped grounds around the buildings. ‘Building 2’ was completed in January 2022. ‘Building 1’ and ‘Building 3’, are scheduled to be completed by 2023.
The primary building on the site, Building 2, “Northstar Dermatology,” is a 9,000 square-feet office building that was completed in January 2022. The plan divides the office into two halves with the clinical zone on either sides, connected by the staff areas in the middle. The concentric arrangement of the clinical zones register the administrative hierarchy by defining the circulation patterns and a system of visual communication and surveillance between doctors, nurses and patients: the doctors’ offices at the very center overlooking the nurse stations, and the nurse stations facing the patient examination rooms on the peripheries.
The floor plan was developed through a series of agent-based computer simulations (using Pedestrian Dynamics and AnyLogic software) in order to synchronize the circulation with the schedule and pattern of activities, maximize efficiency and minimize unwanted obstructions or interactions. The interior finishes and flooring mark and distinguish the public (patients) spaces from the private (staff) areas, at times exposing the mismatch between the original diagram and the final layout.
The facades, considered merely as a form of orthographic representation, are black and white oblique drawings of the buildings themselves, using control joints as lines, the brick-veneer walls as surfaces, and the “shadow” EIFS areas as openings or cut-outs. The thin brick system, used with varied stacked and running bond patterns in horizontal and diagonal arrangements, conform to the drawn projections on the facades, while exposing the symbolic quality of the material as a non-brick—a tiling system that only signifies brick. In this way, the exterior facades function as two-dimensional surfaces wrapped around building shells that attempt to represent, but never fully correspond to, the logic of the interior. In doing so, the project aims to reveal the disjunction between the interior and the exterior, the structure and the skin.
AN.ONYMOUS
AN.ONYMOUS is a design office based in Los Angeles, CA and Columbus, OH. Founded by Iman Ansari and Marta Nowak, the practice focuses on innovative approaches towards architecture and urbanism in relation to technology and human experience. Since its inception in 2012, AN.ONYMOUS has engaged in numerous international projects, encompassing a diverse range of scales from urban, architectural, and interior design, to objects, furniture, and personal devices. AN.ONYMOUS’ work has been published and exhibited in various international venues including MoMA PS1 in New York, the Hammer Museum, and A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles, among others. AN.ONYMOUS has been a design consultant for NASA JPL, a design partner of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), and is currently a design consultant for Google.
