Smiles was conceived with a simple yet radical question: what if a dental clinic could feel less like a medical facility and more like a cultural space? From this idea emerged a project that challenges conventional healthcare design, giving as much importance to user experience, emotional depth, and artistic integration as to clinical precision. Designed… View Article
Smiles was conceived with a simple yet radical question: what if a dental clinic could feel less like a medical facility and more like a cultural space? From this idea emerged a project that challenges conventional healthcare design, giving as much importance to user experience, emotional depth, and artistic integration as to clinical precision. Designed by Wangan Studio and located in Ankara, Türkiye, Smiles reimagines the dental clinic as a place where wellness, care, hospitality, and art converge—transforming treatment into an elevated, human-centered experience. The primary challenge was to create a space that meets the rigorous standards of a healthcare environment while embodying the sensibility of a contemporary art gallery, where design and art are inseparable and together shape a more human experience. Far from sterile surfaces and cold atmospheres, Smiles embraces natural stone, glass, and black oak cladding—materials selected for their tactile warmth, durability, and psychological comfort. The result is a setting where care, culture, and design merge, offering a dynamic and inspiring model for the future of healthcare.
Conceptually, Smiles is closer to a hospitality venue or a private art club than a dental clinic. Patients are welcomed as guests, moving through spaces that feel open, calm, and inspiring rather than intimidating. The design follows a free-plan principle, with stone-clad volumes acting as independent units—at times providing privacy, and at others serving as exhibition walls. This spatial fluidity achieves a balance between openness and seclusion, creating an inclusive and comfortable environment.
Grey stone is reinterpreted as monolithic surfaces covering the floors and walls, rising seamlessly from the ground, while black oak cladding appears solely as a wall element. These stone volumes emerge organically from the floor, reinforcing continuity and unity through precise, monolithic detailing. Grey marble blocks of varying hierarchy and proportion were placed to generate interstitial voids—becoming meeting rooms, consultation areas, and doctors’ offices—turning an abstract composition into a coherent architectural system. In the welcome area, the combination of natural red stone and glass establishes a dialogue between solidity and fragility, permanence and lightness. Stone is reimagined not as static, but as tilted, shifted, and articulated—as if emerging from the earth—transforming into a sculptural, fluid element. This interplay challenges conventional material boundaries and reflects the brand’s bold, unconventional identity.
From the beginning, art was integrated as an inseparable part of the architecture. Featuring a permanent collection and rotating exhibitions with works by artists such as Seçkin Pirim, Mehmet & Kazım, Tom Fellows, and Ömer Faruk Yaman, Smiles has evolved into a continuously transforming cultural environment—enriching its atmosphere with emotional depth and offering visitors moments of discovery beyond treatment. The result is a clinic unlike any other in Türkiye or the world. By dissolving traditional boundaries between healthcare and hospitality, Smiles positions itself as a forward-thinking model for care spaces—rooted in permanence through its use of stone and marble, yet constantly evolving through its curatorial program. It offers its community a place where design excellence and everyday human experience are seamlessly intertwined.