Take Your Cavities to the Theme Park

Thank you for keeping your arms and hands inside the ride until your dental visit comes to a complete stop. It's not a phrase your likely to hear anytime soon, but we're getting closer, with the debut of our second and third installments in the Dentistry for Kid's theme room makeovers.  As a children's space designer and prop maker dentist offices are right up my alley.  Oh, what fun....here we go.

The themed Adventurer room at Dentistry for Kids, by Embellishments Studio.

The Adventurer room is combination of Safari, Exploration and Jungle themes. Created to look like a den of a world class explorer, the room features decorative paint finishes, mural work, ornate crown molding, shutters and faux bamboo shelving. The room is visited by several birds, a friendly giraffe and a mischievous monkey. All of which were sculpted in our studio. Visitors will notice a treasure chest, dinosaur skull, genie lamp and a tiki, all great acquisitions of the explorer.

The jungle and exploration themed dental office, designed and created by Aaron Christensen.

The dentist, Dr. Dustin James is a big Disney theme park fan, so I designed every piece to have that retro 1955 feel as if Walt himself, oversaw the installation. While I don't possess the technology to add animatronics, I hope visitors get the sense that the animals are smiling and wanting to share their stories of adventure.

Whimsical props handcrafted at Embellishments Studio complete the safari themed dental operatory.

The other recently completed room is the Bayou themed room. In this particular operatory our options were very limited by the lack of wall space, so we turned that negative into a positive and utilized the ceiling spaces as much as possible.

A hound dog and his swamp friends, greet the patients at Dentistry for Kids.

This sliver of 3 ft wall was the only area where we could bring the theme down in dimensional form with our cajun shack, featuring Elvis the hound and his firefly eating friend, the frog. The rest of the room adorned with mural work or the dimensional props are up on the ceiling. To utilize the ceilings we carried branches across, resembling mangrove and cypress trees. An old wooden boat, hoisted up into the trees became the timeworn home to two baby raccoons and a visiting blue crab.

A mural and three dimensional props, enhance the bayou themed dentist office.

A waterlily carrying mother opposum, watches her baby swing over the shack, lit by the swag of lantern lights that add to the ambiance.

Mommy opposum carries a waterlily in the old tree.

Out of her mommies reach the baby possum swings into action, above the swamp shack created by Embellishments Studio.

These two rooms are in addition to the Farm room we created earlier this year. It features a farm fresh helping of sculpted animals, mural work and sloppy piggy fun.

The farm themed operatory at Dentistry for Kids, by Aaron Christensen

Hand sculpted chickens are one of the many props used in the barn like interior.

The bees are all abuzz, creating honey in the farm themed dental office treatment room.

A mallard duck, pours a stream of water to keep the baby pig slipping and sliding down the wall. These props were designed and created by Aaron Christensen

The farm room was a off-shoot from the garden theme we created in the office waiting room, where a train visits various theme areas in different parts of the room.

The waiting room at Dentistry for Kids features a train that circles the room high up on the wall. The train visits three themed vignettes. This is the garden portion.

An old west, desert themed area features a silly rattlesnake, cacti and some gold nuggets for discovery.

The boardwalk themed area offers sandy cliffs, with sea life, a visiting gull and a backdrop of a pier amusement park.

When I was a kid, I think counting the individual holes in the acoustical tile and try not to breath the odor of drilled teeth were the only things to do. And, I am sure my experience were similar for a lot of kids. It's great to know that a whole new generation of children, not only get to experience my work in the office, but that the entire space is dedicated to their fun and having a positive memory.

Since it's opening Dentistry for Kids has had an overwhelming amount of requests that they see adult patients. It must be there hope to rewrite their not-so-good childhood experience and relearn that dentistry can be fun. Needless to say, the office is now accepting adult patients for both its kids and teen offices.

If you have a pediatric or kids based business and need some visual magic, give me a call.  I'd love to help you EMBELLISH your space!

Best,

Aaron

Pulling Teeth- Re-imagining the Pediatric Dentist Office

Setting one's self apart from the competition, in my mind, is the new age mother of invention. With technologies ability to crawl, index and categorize everything from A to Z, it seems to me that the only way to be noticed is to be extraordinary at what you do. I have had the distinct pleasure of working with a new Pediatric Dentist on the scene whose ideals and vision is more akin to the extraordinary Walt Disney than a dentist.

As a child, I did not have the greatest of experiences with the dentist. Mine was a seemingly nice guy in his later 50's, white coat and pressed slacks. He spoke softly filling the air with a medicinal blend of mouthwash and cologne. His office was very clinical with textured wallpaper, old magazines, vinyl covered chairs and a walled off reception desk that seemed more like a security check point for what goes on beyond the walnut door marked "Please check in with the receptionist." The office was the product of the clinical mindset, function over form and was designed to get straight to business and get it done effectively and efficiently. There wasn't a surface material in the office that couldn't be pressure washed, scrubbed with bleach or hauled off in a hazmat suit. Counting the precisely place holes in the acoustical tiles, while he rummaged through my mouth was the only escape from the reality of the situation....cavities!

I open the door, expecting to see the recycled vision of my childhood dentist standing before me. This was my first meeting with Dr. Dustin James and I was manifesting the pains of dentistry through the sweat on my brow and the quiver in my hands. Although this was a meeting over design, I somehow felt I was going to end up driving home with gauze in mouth and drooling. To my surprise, standing before me is a thirty-something, bright smiled engaging man with an honest whit, personable way and thankfully no medicinal smell.

Usually when I'm hired to consult or design for uber professionals like dentists, lawyers or doctors, there's a huge communication gap to overcome. I speak in the abstract of the imaginary, waiving my hands as if to carve space into realized objects. They on the other hand are products of their disciplined education hoping for well defined ideas, pragmatic principles and designs that fit into blueprints not storyboards or renderings.

With Dr. James, the initial awkwardness was a product of my experiences now a preconceived notion. Straightline linear this....color theory that, speaking with my hands restrained were all futile exercises designed not to frighten this Doctor of Science with my left brain visions. In a moment he shattered those notions by starting to waive his arms around, motioning objects in the air and talking about movie sets, old restaurants and Walt Disney World. I had entered the twilight zone. Feeling more like I was being punked than interviewed for the work to be done.

Dr. James and I have been friends and collaborators for three years now. We communicate with our hands flying, chicken scratches on the back of napkins and pages of renderings depicting the imaginary realized. Between us we have a museum's worth of story boards, design sketches and mockups of our ideas. Our inaugural project Dentistry for Kids was a success and it's neighboring DFT- Dentistry for Teens recently debuted as the first dentistry office geared especially for teens.

If you haven't experienced the extraordinary in pediatric or teen dental care than I invite you to Wilsonville, Oregon, to visit his offices.

Designed from the ground up for teens, DFT features a technology counter for MAC browsing, smoothies and online music and game play. Props from my studio line the movie theater like cloud above the counter.

There's a bank of Video Game screens for XBox and Playstation play amongst the comic book wall. A vintage Ms. Pacman table console and a DVD jukebox offer entertainment.

After the visit his patients drop by the prize cabinet for a fun take home gift.

The rock n' roll operatory features a 9 ft guitar, video gaming and movie playing on the patient's video screen.

If you'd like to see more pictures be sure to check out and like my Facebook page.
Also, you can see some of our themed operatories here.

For those of you not familiar with the birth of Disneyland, I recommend the book IMAGINEERING-A behind the dreams look at making the magic real from Hyperion press.