Food & Wellness Club

The existing building has no value. The choice is to demolish it. The design process of the wellness centre consists mainly in a strategic and surgical sequence of excavations from a compact architectural volume. The aim is to transform the architecture in a perceptive device, able to emphasise the site’s values and hide what is not worth seeing. Not to be one of many, the wellness club must be characterised by a strong local identity: it’s an Italian wellness club and, more precisely, it is located in Emilia Romagna, near Bologna. The core of the project is a secret garden, filled with typical fruit trees and decorative plants. Raised from the ground level and opened to the countryside landscape, it is the place where all the main interior spaces overlook. Around these, like in the archetypical roman thermal baths, there is a sequence of more intimate spaces served by a system of small patios. The technology must be part of the building, but you would see only its effects, not the hardware. There is every kind of technical device: lighting, music, water effects, heating, etc., but everything is integrated into the architecture. The material and constructive choices are coherent with all of this: all the pavements are made of brick tiles, the structure is mainly in wood, and so the skin, used for solar and privacy control, that reminds the brick weave typical of many rural buildings. The strategy has also a climatic value: it permits the best possible passive use of the solar gain and of the ventilation provided by the winds.

Leisure

Bologna, Italy

Year

2015

Status

Finalist

Size

-

Client

YAC

Collaborators

-

Design Team

SG/A Sedicigradi