A meticulously designed medical centre

The first private medical centre in Chisinau, Moldova, the Centrul de Diagnostic German is a foreign owned company founded in 2007 that works closely with leading clinics in Germany and other European countries. With equipment capable of performing high-level tests such as nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, digital mammography and endoscopy, it describes itself as a medical centre that offers patients a European level of service. The building that houses it was completed in 2019 and blends gracefully into the heart of the city thanks to a project that focused in particular on the external reception area, creating a pleasant transition zone between the street and the interior of the centre. A kind of garden-terrace, it was conceived and designed by the architects from Zen Design back in pre-Covid times but is proving particularly useful in the present context. This outdoor area, which feels like a natural extension of both the building and the street, anticipates the main design features of the medical centre: transparency, linearity, importance of natural elements and a colour palette consisting of four main colours, grey, wood, white and blue.
In the outdoor area the predominant colour is the grey of the surface coverings, chosen to give a strongly material feel to the entrance façade and the paving of the outdoor reception terrace, which differs from the grey of the street in terms of the quality of the material used, which clearly identifies it as part of the centre. The chosen material, porcelain slabs from Italgraniti’s Sands Experience collection, evokes the aesthetics and beauty of sedimentary stone and sandstone and creates a pleasant and safe paving with natural appeal. This reference to nature echoes the green areas that are the other important aspect of the reception terrace. The space is delimited by long planters on the side facing the street and large flowerpots dotted around the areas and along the wall of the building, whose glazed facade allows light to enter and offers an outside view, creating a visual connection between this space and the interior of the medical centre. The key feature here is the bright grey of Italgraniti’s Shale slabs, a slate-inspired collection against which the other main colours stand out in restrained contrast. These include the white of the walls, the warm wood of the wall panels and the counters with their reassuringly curved shape, and the blue of the logo and lettering, which is echoed in the colour of the seats, window partitions and door frames. The carefully controlled use of colour creates a visually balanced environment with a look that is sober and efficient but never cold, largely thanks to the natural appeal of the wood, the stone effect flooring and the plants growing in pots and along the green walls.