TO DEVISE Los Rocas Dentistry — “on the rocks” in Spanish — Benco Dental interior designer Mandy Welman climbed back into her childhood, part of which she spent near Portland, Oregon.

Part of the Incisal Edge Design Competition  team that created the award-winning Practice of the Future, Welman recently explained her inspiration to  Incisal Edge Managing Editor Brian Dawson:

“When I began envisioning this building, I thought about the shape and flow of the space,” Welman says. “Throughout the process, it always had the sounds of the surf crashing behind it, and the stark, breathtaking rocky terrain so prevalent on the Oregon coast. I remember that water-crashing sound best, and it fit the building and the environment we wanted to create.”

The impetus for Welman and her design compatriots, Josh Diehl and Monica Wilder, was to lessen patient anxiety — which will be presumably no less a concern in the decades hence than it is now. “We used a lot of glass to create an open, honest communication with nature,” Welman says. “This gives the patient’s mind a place to focus and tune out stressful emotions.”

The trio also made sure that Los Rocas’s spectacular natural surroundings — the water, coastline and natural light that make the westernmost edges of Oregon so alluring — meshed fully with the practice’s interior. What Welman calls the “bat-wing design” of the treatment areas enhances privacy between operatories, as well as giving each patient his or her own unique, unobstructed view of the bay and the ocean beyond.

View renderings of the award-winning practice and receive interior design tips at: https://viewer.zmags.com/publication/9dc6d3b8#/9dc6d3b8/160

(Photos, courtesy Eric Larsen, Benco Dental.) 2017 Incisal Edge Design Competition, Practice of the Future winners (shown) include:  Interior design and space planning: Mandy Welman; graphic design: Monica Wilder; Revit rendering: Josh Diehl.