Project category: Remodel/Renovation (completed May 2005)

Chief administrator: Christopher J. Sclafani, COO, (914) 242-1300

Firm: Cerniglia Architecture and Planning, PC, (845) 221-1112

Design team: Philip A. Cerniglia RA, Architect/Interior Designer (Cerniglia Architecture and Planning, PC); Peter Rosen, Mechanical/Electrical Engineer (Harold Rosen Associates); Christopher Sclafani, Owner Representative/Programming (Mount Kisco Medical Group)

Photography: Cerniglia Architecture and Planning, PC

Total building area (sq. ft.): 10,100

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $123

Total construction cost (excluding land): $1,245,157


The client’s program for a new Aesthetic Center required a functional, efficient, and adaptable plan with an upscale, aesthetically appealing look and feel. The preexisting use was a second-floor office space, accessed via a typically uninviting elevator corridor. The design concept is organized around the building’s existing central service, elevator, and circulation core. The elevator corridor’s solid end walls have been removed, however, and replaced with hyperbolic-shaped, glass-block partitions, allowing natural light and a sense of openness and continuity to filter into a once void and finite space. The glass block also serves to announce the physicians’ office access points.

Clinical space has been grouped into three specialty areas: Plastic Surgery, Dermatology, and Eye/Nose/Throat. Shared rooms including clerical services, clean and soiled utility, PACS, a procedures room, and a staff toilet are centrally located. The grouped specialty areas are anchored by three nurses’ stations oriented to enhance a sense of division, yet with each providing a refreshing, open volume as relief to enclosed corridor circulation. The grouped specialties promote a more efficient and prompt delivery of patient care and services.


Two waiting areas provide patients with convenient exam room and core facility access. Curved reception casework in each reception/waiting area echoes the glass-block entry partitions, while directing patients to clinical area access points. Floor finish patterns reinforce implicit user circulation patterns, beginning at the elevators and continuing through the glass-block partitions into the waiting/reception areas. Universally designed exam rooms afford adaptability and familiarity.