Culti Day Spa

MILAN, ITALY - 2008

NCB has to deal with the definition of the Culti Day Spa new concept in Mauri Street, cooperating with the brand art direction and focusing on the architectural design and the works supervision. The space, located inside a renewed industrial hangar, expands to about 1.200 sqm between the ground floor and the underground level.

The project has defined an emotional and functional layout able to guarantee comfort, elegance and of course privacy since the first steps; simple and severe lines which, through the use of natural and precious materials, allow to communicate  the essential and sophisticated Culti philosophy.

The reception, which overlooks Mauri Street, welcomes visitors through a fancy scenery covered with Marquinia brushed marble big slabs; behind it, thanks to two symmetrical entrances, the concept shop and the beauty services - hairstyle, barber shop, nail-care - , enclosed by frosted and back-painted glass, help to structure the internal paths and flows and also to generate charming lounge-atmospheres. The beauty services area is placed on a wide gallery facing the internal side, bordering a big zenithally illuminated semicircular courtyard, and linked through a spectacular helicoidal staircase that connected the ground floor and the underground level.

The stairway geometry is included into two high orthogonal walls which mark the relax zone, covered by a peculiar heat-treated Larchwood boiserie of horizontal slats, obvious reference to the Nordic Alvar Aalto architectures, revisited in a Milanese way.

In the hypogeum floor there are the Day-Spa services: changing rooms, body treatments areas, posarium, saunas, steam rooms, mineral baths, couple treatments zone. The Culti philosophy takes shape through a pure and essential draw of the interiors, the accurate selection of natural materials, the warm nuances palette: different Walnut Travertine marble coatings, Apricena stone, frosted and transparent bronzed glasses, heat-treated Larchwood boiserie and furnitures, mud and dove grey resins.

The saunas design represented a special point for NCB, considering that a new innovative precast sandwich panels system has been introduced, using high density glass wool to isolate and heating spruce slats as covering.

These are interiors in contrast with the frenetic city lifestyle, in order to rediscover new balance and refreshed harmony. Not by chance, after a few months from the official opening, Culti Day Spa Milano received many appreciation also overseas, being awarded the same year from Condè Nast Traveller readers as best internationally Day Spa.