Betty Birger Arquitetura & Design was tasked with completing a space for Clinica Bersou in São Paulo, Brazil.

The question I am always asked is “what was the greatest challenge of this project” and, for me, in this case, the greatest one was to create a spatial aesthetic language that would please the 70-year-old father, an opera lover, and his 39-year-old son, passionate about rock. And, when I presented the first version of the design, it was very gratifying to have it fully approved by both.

Another challenge was to establish the correct flows for doctors, staff and supplies fully separated from those of the patients, especially the access through the elevators hall, which, due to the structural impossibility of the building, has a single entrance door. Our solution was to separate the reception from the waiting room, so patients can enjoy a cup of coffee, watch their favorite TV shows or read while doctors can enter through a camouflaged door on the marble wall of the reception. Patients in postoperative period, with service priority, also enter and leave through this door, not embarrassing other patients who are already in the waiting room.

In the heart of the space, and with access to all circulation and directly from the waiting room, we designed a nursing pool between two curved wooden volumes which seem to float in the space, and included comfortable armchairs where newly-operated patients or those who will be anesthetized can sit and wait for their appointment quietly.

The offices and examination and procedure rooms were allocated by the glazed façade, and sandblasted glass partitions bring light to the internal circulation. LED profiles embedded in the skirting boards and black profiles on the ceiling molding mark the paths and, along with the door stops also in black profiles, create an elegant and cool atmosphere.

Architect: Betty Birger Arquitetura & Design
Contractor: Étimo Engenharia
Photography: Renato Stockler