Designing a Future-Ready Medical Center with Enscape and Veras

Summary:

• Sonnentag Architektur, a Germany-based architectural firm, designs contemporary and sustainable architecture that places people at the center of all decisions.
• Recently, Sonnentag produced designs for Ärztezentrum Mönchengladbach (Mönchengladbach Medical Centre).
• With a tight deadline, Veras played a key role in design, helping the team iterate incredibly fast. Meanwhile, Enscape helped them overcome challenging topography.
• The final renderings were presented to the client, who found them so persuasive that the more extravagant design got their approval.

Designing a medical center in a short timeframe might sound like an impossible task, but that’s exactly what Sonnentag Architektur set out to do.

Based in Schwäbisch Gmünd and Offenbach, Germany, Sonnentag Architektur is led by founder Thomas Sonnentag. The practice offers residential and commercial architectural and general planning services and specializes in medical planning, particularly for radiotherapy practices.

Sonnentag was recently tasked with producing designs for Ärztezentrum Mönchengladbach, an upcoming medical center in Mönchengladbach, a city between Düsseldorf and the Dutch border. The team had just two weeks to design a building to house radiotherapy treatment on the ground floor and flexible medical spaces above. With tricky site topography and a tight deadline, Thomas, architect Marco Iannelli and the BIM design team turned to Enscape and Veras from the Enscape Premium Suite to help meet their deadline and design goals.

But creating a healing, flexible, and future-proofed healthcare space with mountains of pressure was no small feat.

Balancing care, complexity, and creative freedom

With only a short time to complete the design, the Sonnentag team knew they would be working under constraints, and not just because of the timeline. The site for the new building is a tree-covered grassy area bordered by a car park, a public road, an entrance and driveway, and Elisabeth Hospital Rheydt, a teaching hospital. Finding a way to get around these spatial limits while ensuring accessibility and visibility was challenging, especially as the client wanted an inviting, welcoming entrance.

In addition, while the building had some strict requirements, other areas needed versatility. The radiotherapy treatment area needed to be located on the ground floor, and the other floors would serve as adaptable medical office spaces. "You could have a doctor's practice that is 50m² or 150m²—or that takes two stories," Marco explains. "That's why we need to be quite flexible with the design."

On top of functional demands, the client also had a clear vision for the feel of the center: it needed to be not just practical, but healing, inviting, and warm. Thomas and Marco saw this as the perfect opportunity to show off the creative, human-centered approach Sonnentag is known for. "We aimed for innovative geometry and a healing architectural environment using warm, ecological materials like wood."

With tight timing, a complex site, flexible interior needs, and a sensitive aesthetic brief, the team needed a design process to rise to the challenge without sacrificing speed or creativity.

Rapid iteration, real-time insight

With no time to waste, Marco began modeling in Vectorworks before using Enscape for real-time 3D visualization. One feature in particular helped unlock the design: the Site Context tool. “We had quite difficult topography,” he says, “[but] by using the Site Context tool, we could design it.” Enscape helped the Sonnentag architects refine the building’s geometry and experiment with the facade and entrance configurations. Marco also used the asset library to populate the scene with patients, healthcare workers, and landscaping elements, bringing it to life.

When it came to materials, Marco saw an opportunity to bring Veras into the workflow. Having recently used the AI-powered tool on a personal project, he was curious to see how it could support this brief. With Veras, he could quickly visualize a range of material options, testing those that met the brief for ecological warmth and healing qualities. After Veras generated a broad set of initial results, Thomas and Marco selected a few that looked promising and got Veras to produce further refinements, iterating again and again with ease.

The pace was transformative. “We had so many variations at such a high speed that we were really, really boosted for the first time,” Marco says. “If I look back, we produced 100 variations of the same perspective in maybe one day!”

To prepare for the client presentation, Marco finalized several renderings in Enscape, produced the key image using Veras, and polished it with Photoshop. The result was a sleek, modern design that felt inviting rather than clinical. “We have stairs that lead you to the entrance, and we have an opening of the facade,” Thomas explains. “Then we also have this big gesture on the right side of the image, which is expressive.”

With the visuals complete and the deadline looming, all that remained was to present the design, and see whether it would resonate.

The design worth building (even if it pushes boundaries)

After rising to the challenge of a tight deadline, the Sonnentag Architektur team presented their design to the client, who runs a private network of radiotherapy clinics across Germany. Although the proposed building was more ambitious than a traditional medical clinic, the design and immersive renderings won the client over.

While initial concepts pushed boundaries even further, the final concept carefully balanced creativity and buildability. Using tools like Veras and Enscape meant Marco could iterate quickly, refine ideas, and communicate everything clearly, which all drove the project forward. "To be honest, the first design was even crazier than the final one," he explains, "but we found a really good compromise between craziness and architecture that [is buildable]."

For Sonnentag Architektur, the Mönchengladbach Medical Centre project also demonstrated how far design workflows have come and where it's headed. "Thanks to the consistent and interdisciplinary use of real-time render software, it was possible to design a future-oriented building that would not have been possible 10 years ago," says founder Thomas Sonnentag. 

Although construction on the facility is still likely a few years away, the design proves that future-focused thinking and the right tools can shape spaces for tomorrow's needs. As Marco puts it: "As architects, we have to think futuristically—what we design today becomes reality years from now. But the world evolves during that time, so our thinking must stay ahead of the curve. It's not just about geometry; it's also about materials, energy systems, and more—because we are shaping the future.