SOUTHERN BEAUTY
April 30, 2005 | 12:00am
Looking at this building at Westgate in Filinvest, Alabang, you’d think this was a modern art gallery with columns jutting out of a box and some spatial gymnastics in its exterior. With the façade changing colors at different times of the day, this new building is seemingly a perfect rectangle in proportion that you’d never suspect this was one lot that was so irregular it caused concern on how it was going to be built at the outset. Once that problem was solved, the rest just fell into place.
The structure is characterized by expanses of glass on one side, allowing for views outside, and a pond surrounding it. On the second level, there’s an open space with café appointments that your second guess would be that it’s a restaurant.
Not quite on both counts. This is the new Alabang clinic of the Belo Medical Group, designed by architect Gimmy Garcia, whose portfolio includes residential and commercial spaces all over Metro Manila. So it is a bit of departure from what you might expect of a clinic offering cosmetic and surgical services to bring out the beauty in its clients. It’s not feminine, it’s not antiseptically boring either. Rather, it’s more of a quiet space with soft lighting hidden in layers in the ceiling and the flooring. But not quite a departure from what you might expect from Vicki Belo, who always does things with grace and style.
Standing on a 200-sq.m. lot, the new Belo clinic in Alabang is a far cry from what it used to be – a 120-sq.m. space at Alabang Town Center in the basement level. While the old clinic served its clients well for the past nine years, the space was getting to be too small for the growing clientele of the clinic. In fact, Alabang was the third clinic the group opened, recognizing even at the beginning how the well-heeled community was growing and how the people were opening up to what the clinic was offering.
As Dr. Vicki Belo says, "Alabang is the fastest growing segment in Metro Manila and the clientele here is getting younger." In fact, some of the gifts that Belo clinics give out in their quarterly raffles include iPods for clients up to 19 years old, iBooks for 20 to 39, and Bulgari watches for 40 to 65 (and above).
Built at a record six months, the new clinic has a floor area of 440 sq.m. on two levels, almost four times bigger than the old ATC space. What also makes this Belo clinic unique is that, apart from its surgical facilities, it has a 24-hour post-operative care service.
On the first floor are three doctors’ rooms and a VIP room. On the second floor the interiors are subdivided into a series of 12 rooms, eight of them scrub rooms (with showers) and four aesthetician’s rooms; the manager’s office; the pantry; restrooms; and a terrazzo that serves coffee and pastries. This open space encourages conversations between clients in a more relaxed atmosphere, and a place for the doctors to take a break from the stream of patients that come in every day.
The open terrazzo, which wraps the entire side of the building, according to architect Gimmy Garcia, also solves the architectural problem of dealing with the triangular lot. And besides, any feng shui master would not have allowed such a space to remain "uncured." So in the end, all the ideas of the architect and geomancer Fermin Eucariza were condensed into a blueprint planned to stand out of its surroundings and at the same time blend in with the specific location – right next door to Fitness First.
"You cannot be a first-class clinic when you’re not in a first-class space," says Gimmy. Inside, we spot some interesting furnishings, including the Bikini Chair designed by Chris Lacson of Habitat in one of the offices on the second floor.
The interiors of the clinic are designed along Zen lines, with soft lighting in the rooms , off-white walls and a lot of slatted wood as cabinets. In fact, the only colorful room is the pantry on the second floor facing the parking lot in front.
As with anything that Vicki does, the launching of the Belo Alabang clinic several weeks ago was a grand, star-studded affair with Vicki and partner, businessman Joey Santos welcoming friends, clients and the stars.
So, why do more people now go through cosmetic and surgical procedures? Vicki explains, "Because now they have options. It used to be that women who go for these things would always tell me, ‘Doktora, I want to be beautiful because my husband or my boyfriend left me.’ It’s not always like that anymore. Women who want to improve their looks go for procedures just because they have that option and they’re not ashamed of it. And I’m all for it if it makes them feel better about themselves."
It makes you feel better that when you reach that stage that you need a little help from science to make you look and feel good about yourself, nobody’s going to make you feel bad about it.
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