Spaces for Wellness: Integrating Fitness into Everyday Environments

As cities continue to grow and daily realities shift rapidly, people are turning to new and evolving ways to maintain their well-being. While promoting active lifestyles has long been a focus for many planners and architects, through pedestrian- and bike-friendly cities, parks, and fitness or sports centers, recent times have shown that these publicly valued facilities are not always accessible. A clear solution has emerged in recent years, accelerated by the global pandemic in 2020. Both homes and workplaces have begun to adapt their interior spaces, incorporating designated areas and equipment to support physical activity and provide opportunities for movement during the day.

+ 12

Staying physically active doesn’t require much and can be achieved through a multitude of creative and resourceful approaches. Whether it’s a traditional home gym, smaller equipment and design interventions, or simply a cleared area, any pre-planned open space can function as an exercise zone. On average, 30 sq ft (2.7 sqm) is the minimum space needed to move comfortably without equipment, while a slightly larger 100 sq ft (9.2 sqm) is recommended for a machine-based setup.

The following examples are categorized according to the design and spatial solutions implemented in each case. The Traditional Home Gym refers to a dedicated space that replicates the setup of a conventional gym within the home. Installation describes a more creative approach to incorporating physical activity, often tailored to the specific needs and interests of the inhabitants. Lastly, Flexible Open Space refers to an adaptable area in the home or office that can serve multiple purposes, including exercise.

Traditional Home Gym

Lee House / Eduardo Glycerio + Studio MK27 – Marcio Kogan

“The front veranda is delimited by a foyer in the façade, revealing two wooden boxes divided by the social area. The kitchen opens to the living room, encrusted in one of the boxes that hold the utility areas. The bar opens out to the social area and is contained in the box that holds the bedroom as well. At the end of the corridor of the bedrooms, which can also be accessed from the outside of the house, there is a spa delimited by external walls and composed of a gym room, a sauna, and a small outdoor pool encircled by the deck.”

The Barn / Carney Logan Burke Architects

“The 2400-square-foot new-build, finished this past summer, actually serves three purposes: besides needing a guest house for the family’s many visitors, the homeowners wanted a dedicated workout area for her (“I exercise outside whenever I can, but needed something with views to use in bad weather,” she says.) and, for him, an expansive first-floor garage with a ceramic checkerboard tile floor.”

Villa G / GAAP studio associati

“The garden has been projected respecting the existing rocks and the important tree species sited in the plot. Inside the garden take place a pedestrian ringway that surrounds the villa and that slowly reveals different layers of the garden: a playground area, a vegetable garden, and a relaxation area.”

The Sports Pavilion / Horomystudio

“The architects were faced with the task of designing a complete sports facility within an existing suburban landscape and limited space. The basement containing locker rooms and weight benches, the ground floor with cardio-vascular machines, and the first floor accommodating a yoga gym – constitute the necessary building area requirements.”

Installation

In Suspension / NatureHumaine

“The client wants to transform the last two levels of a building to create living spaces for her two athletically inclined children, who are now grown adults. The primary goal is to create a shared living space in which all utilitarian functions are shared but which still allows each person to have privacy. The architectural concept consists of removing the floor currently separating the two levels to create a wide-open space in which two large boxes appear to float in mid-air. This configuration creates three gaps, each being two floors high; the centre gap becomes a physical exercise room with a pair of gymnastics rings.”

Skate Park House / LEVEL Architects

“They wanted both a skateboard park and a piano rehearsal room to reflect their own individual interests. The sliding glass panels of the first floor open up onto this enclosed area and allow for the workshop and studio to expand outwards. The studio has a skateboard bowl embedded into the floor with multiple angles for plenty of different interactions.”

Court House / KOIZUMISEKKEI

“For this house project, we’ve tried to create a new relationship between the indoor basketball court and the living house. The layout arrangement of this house is inspired by typical gymnasium layouts, where we have the indoor basketball court planned in the center core space of the house, with rooms located on opposite sides of the court.”

Urban Man Cave / Inhouse Brand Architects

“Inhouse Brand Architects has converted the unused lounge area of a Cape Town residence into an industrial-inspired dream pad for the family’s lucky teenage boy and his friends. Taking into account the youngster’s various interests such as skating, surfing, and socialising, the Inhouse team aimed to create a trendy, multifunctional space.”

House in Tsukawaki / Horibe Associates

“The client, who spends his days off travelling to mountains in various regions for rock climbing, is a professional-level boulderer who is also qualified as an instructor. We were asked to design a serious climbing wall that could also be used as the client’s training room. The bouldering room is adjacent to the living room and offers enjoyment both to the person training and to family members watching him while they spend time together in the same space.”

Inteltion Office / Onion

“In terms of design, the problem of office syndrome is Onion’s concern. Spending hours working in the same bodily posture is unhealthy, whether with a computer or a pencil. Onion’s proposal is the design for good health, promoted by the office for the employees. The arrangement of stretching tools is the design of Inteltion Office. These tools are organised by areas, ranging from easy to difficult exercises, namely “finger walk”, “arm wheel”, “spinning chairs”, and most difficult of all “monkey bars”.”

Flexible Open Space

Garden Studio Gym in North London / EASTWEST ARCHITECTURE

“The brief was to create a workout studio in the rear garden of our client’s house as there was no gym in the local área of Walthamstow Village. Our restrictions were quite demanding, as we had to work on the permitted development regulations and a small footprint within the garden. The permitted development only allows a certain roof height. To get around this, we lowered the ground floor as there is no local or national policy on digging down –now we have plenty of height for skipping and jumping.”

Biombombastic / elii

“Firstly, an open space is configured, and the whole programme is grouped and arranged around an L-shaped band on two sides. This band includes access to the household, the outer façade windows, a folding bed, the storage space, a complete kitchen, a fold-down auxiliary table, access to the bathroom, and the washing machine. It optimises the spatial distribution and compacts all the functions so that everyday activities can benefit from as much space as possible, all the while adapting to the geometry of the apartment.”

TKSTYLE Office / JACKY.W DESIGN

“Through breaking the routines and bringing a ‘home’ into the workspace, JACKY.W DESIGN created an open and multifunctional living experience space for the fashion brand TKSTYLE BOUTIQUE. The designers gave full play to the structure and height (8 meters) of the original space, and ingeniously integrated functional areas for working, reception, fitness, and conference, etc., into the two-story space without rigid partitions. There are windows in each wall, which ensure sufficient natural light to penetrate the space, thereby resulting in a bright and airy environment.”

This article is part of the ArchDaily Topics: Building Wellbeing: Designing Spaces for Healing, presented in collaboration with the Hushoffice.

With its line of A-class pods Hushoffice helps create acoustically balanced workplaces that offer great environment for collaboration and focus, foster employee wellbeing, and accommodate the needs of neurodiverse staff, as well as employees with motor impairments.

Every month we explore a topic in-depth through articles, interviews, news, and architecture projects. We invite you to learn more about our ArchDaily Topics. And, as always, at ArchDaily we welcome the contributions of our readers; if you want to submit an article or project, contact us.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on March 31, 2020.