The Warehouse Gym, Dubai

VSHD Design was tasked with designing The Warehouse Gym in the region’s most growing and vibrant design community – Dubai Design District. The main challenge was to deliver a boutique fitness facility that would be inviting, inspiring, authentic, functional and in context with a leading destination for design, art, and culture.

The client’s brief was to design a gym floor, juice bar, cycling studio and circuit training factory all within a limited space. As the gym area was originally made up of three separate retail outlets, a semi-transparent cube was inserted in the center of the space that could be combined with the gym floor to create a large studio. The aim was to fabricate a seamless flow in a functional manner, where each activity has its own unique space, yet is open to one another depending on the needs.

The reception/juice bar was designed as a communal space with a 17-meter-long glass façade on the main street creating a meeting point for the design community where they can meet after their daily workout or for non-members to stop by and grab a healthy smoothie or salad while experiencing the ambiance of the gym.

Inspired by brutalism in architecture and underground fight clubs, VSHD was determined to refrain from the norm of using the usual materials found in most health clubs. Instead, materials like cured concrete bricks were combined with gold-copper alloy to create a modern and elegant yet muscular ambiance. Specifically customized LED suspended light were used to conceal all the ceiling services while maintaining an overall vibrant lighting mood that can be controlled by the different exercise zones.