2024 Galleries
The Spark Gallery pages are one of our most popular design destinations, with thousands of visitors each year. Check out some of the latest Spark entries, in the galleries below.
Galleries // 2015 Spark:Health // Studio Dental
Studio Dental
Winner - Bronze
Competition: Spark:Health
Designer: David Montalba, AIA - Founding Pricipal
Design Type: mobile dental office
Company / Organization / School: Montalba Architects, Inc.
Website: http://www.montalbaarchitects.com
Team Members: Akiko Suzuki, Jennifer Loesche - Montalba Architects, Inc. (design team)
Dan MacLeith - Pacific Westline, Inc. (fabrication team)
With only 230 interior square feet, the primary challenge was to create the illusion of a more spacious interior, while also packing required program into the tiny footprint, including a sterilization room, waiting area, and two operatories. The sterilization room is hidden behind millwork panels that wrap around to form the waiting bench with integrated tablet for patient forms. A centralized, double-sided millwork panel houses equipment for both operatories, while also concealing the sound and HVAC systems. Rather than opening the side panels to potentially unattractive exterior environments, each operatory gestures to the sky, with 11-foot ceilings and translucent sculpted skylights. The skylights deliver abundant, diffused natural light and also house TV monitors. Strategic mirrored strips in the corner reveals visually expand the space. Acoustical dampening material layered in the interior helps maintain patient privacy. The material palette reinforces the office’s identity, with natural wood millwork, bright white surfaces throughout, and a custom perforation pattern that suggests a dense tree canopy. The 26-foot-long trailer’s exterior features the same custom perforation pattern on the exterior panels, at once a memory of the original utilitarian trailer function, layered with the new use through the client’s branding and imagery.
