The existing building (formerly used by a taxi company) is located in Hellevoetsluis, close to Rotterdam. It’s divided in two parts: a non-heated hall-like building where the main activities of the project take place (the treatment rooms, the waiting area and the exhibition space) & a house-like building, which is dedicated to the administration of the surgery. The design allows a smooth cohabitation of the surgery activities and the contemporary art collection that the client wants to establish in the building, one re-enforcing the strangeness of the other.

An atypical program. The orthodontist surgery requires six ordinary treatment units (including one treatment chair, computer, air and saliva suction connections), one intake room for first consultations and patients who require more intimacy, an x-ray room, an archive and storage place for the 3000 plaster bite-models…

Since june 2002, the Kraal surgery accommodates again its one hundred patients a day, mostly children and teenagers aged between 8 and 17. Every patient (often accompanied by a parent) spends approximately half an hour in the building, of which 10 to 15 minutes in a treatment room, the rest in the waiting space, that has been designed like an event space including a 20 meter long projection screen, a playground/slope and internet workstations. This event space includes 4 mutimedia projectors in order to allow video installations and art exhibitions during the week and/or the weekends when the surgery is closed.

Receptacle for the un-expectable. The multimedia facilities of the gallery offer to artists a space of creation and a structure to experiment new video or sound installations. The possibility to show creative video material on a 20 meter long panoramic screen has been an important programmatic aspect during the designing process. The result is a shifting of the initial medical destination of the building towards an unexpected combination that destabilises its identity. A medical use / a dual program in a black and enigmatic setting.

The space has been designed to be a flexible receptacle for contemporary art, to accommodate installations and encourage ambitious video works. Art institutions like the Kunst-Akademie Rotterdam & the Berlage Institute already showed interest in initiating a regularly renewed Art program in the gallery.

The good, the bad and the ugly. Dealing with ugliness, or at least with the pretentious image of an existing building (and its bucolic urban surrounding) has been one of the first design issues. Through its proportions, materials, finishing and initial use (a former taxi-central), the building we had to inscribe our project in, was already showing far too much! so our work mostly consisted in… removing.

Removing colors, information and meanings - literally. Everything has been painted in black (outside and inside walls, window frames, the surrounding pavement and marble planks). We looked for the black of stage and theatre, needed to focus one’s attention on specific objects, people or events. By removing particular signs of the building’s initial purpose and identity, we hoped to succeed in designing an anonymous and enigmatic surrounding for that very atypical program combination. once we could finally enter the building,… We designed the specific objects to be seen that the orthodontist needed to work: a floating treatment unit (wrapped in a 20 meter long projection screen), a playground/slope, tables and desks.