The spaces of the Academic Ambulatory Clinic of the Humboldt University of Berlin for Psychology and Psychodiagnostics are located in Berlin Adlershof in an existing building with a bright courtyard planted with tropical plants. An outpatient clinic for psychodiagnostics in the areas of social interaction and obsessive-compulsive disorders with a focus on modern diagnostics of the autism spectrum requires a sensitive spatial design – the patients’ needs for privacy and confidentiality must be taken into account in order to create a protective and at the same time supportive environment. For this purpose, the existing 800 square metre unit was completely gutted and redesigned.
Client — Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Size — 808 sqm floorspace
Services — Interior design
Completion — 05/2022
Location — Berlin
The reception with its adjacent waiting area is divided into sections and islands that allow the patients to create their own privacy while they are waiting. The partition walls pick up on the visual language of curves and semicircles. Black chairs complement the built-in furnishings.
Planters integrated into the built-in furnishings provide space for large plants that act as a visual screen and reference to the building’s leafy courtyard. A lively environment that provides space for retreat and tranquillity but is also a playground for the waiting children.
The new spatial structure became a “dance of spaces” by combining the different areas into bundles, breaking them up and shifting them in relation to each other. The private rooms now push into the 50-metre-long corridor in varying depths, dividing it into sections and niches and giving it a dynamic feel.
This concept of area bundles with their individual colour and form language was also transferred to the furniture designed by baukind. The furnishings are separate elements that can be put together modularly and thus allow for reconfiguration in some sections.
Round corners, coloured segments, waiting niches and built-in furniture give the corridor a high accommodation value. An inviting atmosphere with playful elements accompanies the patients and therapists on the extensive paths of Germany’s largest university outpatient clinic. The oak furniture is complemented by coloured and black accents of the accessories as well as by the integrated plants.
The distribution of colours in the therapy and group rooms results from the “dance of spaces” creating the bundles areas and their corresponding colour assignments in the corridor. The bathrooms are monochrome in colour, both from the outside and the inside, and are thus easy to locate.
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