Design
One of the aspects the Paradises liked most about their existing practice was that clients and pets entered through a front door and waited for their appointment in a living room that contained comfortable furniture and a fireplace. The surroundings minimized animals’ stress levels, which led to better examinations. Therefore, the Paradises were adamant about maintaining the homey waiting area.
Like any typical house, the Victorian’s front door faced the street and the driveway was on the side. The people who first utilized the home for a business constructed the parking lot in the back, which led to a challenge for Lyons. “We went through a number of iterations of entering from the rear where the parking lot is but Mark and Danielle liked the character of the original— entering from the front—so I designed a big, ADA-compliant porch that brings people from the parking lot up and around so they still can enter from the front.”
The reception area was updated and now features a concierge space rather than reception desk to make it feel a bit homier. Separate cat and dog waiting areas maintain the comfort level of the animals. “We wanted the waiting room to maintain the character that it had with the windows, moulding and fireplace, but the conditions
of the space had to be upgraded,” Lyons remembers. “It basically was retained but redone. Then we changed the layout. There are exam rooms in the front where there were none before; all the exam rooms are different because they are basically spaces we reused from the existing building.”
The exam rooms serve as a transition between the warm, homey feel of the reception area and the brightly lit modern new wing of the clinic, which holds the pharmacy, technician stations and surgery area. “The back looks
like you’re in a brand new building; the surgery area is aluminum and glass and obviously a state-of-the-art hospital,” Mark notes. “If clients have to take their pet back to the surgery room they see how technological our clinic really is.”
Construction
The Paradises originally planned to move the clinic to another location during construction, but finding a space proved difficult, and the logistics of moving equipment and animals threatened to be a nightmare. A contractor suggested construction could take place around the day-to-day operations of the clinic. “What made it doable was the site supervisor, Paul McVay of Bowerman Associates [Providence, R.I.],” Mark says. “He made it a point to know our business and patterns. If he knew he was going to do something that would disrupt our service, he would sit me down and explain it.”
Construction began by demolishing a small addition on the Victorian house that was not original to the home. The Paradises had been performing surgery and x-rays in the addition, so these services were moved into the already cramped main house. “We had to move surgery to the second-floor storage area. We were transporting animals up and down stairs, which was not ideal,” Mark remembers.
The Paradises were interested in being as environmentally friendly as possible with their new facility. Initially they wanted a geothermal system to heat and cool the building but were talked out of it by a mechanical engineer who said they would be unhappy with the technology. During design, Lyons asked Mark where he wanted the six outdoor compressors for the air-conditioning units. “I didn’t want them anywhere,” Mark says. “We were trying to recreate a home and people coming into somebody’s home shouldn’t have to walk by these noisy conditioning units with their pets. We now have eight 400-foot-deep wells for the geothermal system under our parking lot.”
The closed-loop geothermal system pumps water through the facility using the Earth’s steady temperature. During winter, the ground heats the water and a heat exchanger releases the heat into the clinic. During summer, the geothermal system removes heat from the house and replaces it with cool air. Mark has never regretted installing the technology and calls it “phenomenal”.
While the Paradises and staff practiced in the original Victorian home, the new facility was built around them. Once the new facility was complete, the practice moved into it while the crew renovated the existing building to match the new. Construction began in May 2010 and took just more than one year.