With sites all over and , — venue host of our podcast — has always presented itself as more than co-working spaces. Founder, , consistently emphasises the blurring of boundaries between workspace facilities and hospitality offerings — and now there is a third part to add.
With new locations at South Yarra and Richmond in Melbourne, The Commons has decisively brought health and wellness into the equation. The Commons Health Clubs include fitness and recovery facilities such as gym spaces, infrared saunas and a bathhouse, as well as studios for yoga, pilates, spin, mindfulness and more. It’s comprehensive, covering just about every aspect of the daily routine that the young professional demographic might need as they traverse workspace, hospitality and health design typologies.
“One of the words they [The Commons] use is ‘ecosystem,’ in terms of how health fits in to working life and life in general,” says Mark Simpson, joint creative director alongside Damien Mulvihill at . “I think there was a bit of a gap in the market — how do you take that community-focused, member-first approach that they do so well with shared workspace and hospitality, [and then add] health?”
Design aesthetics aside (we’ll come to that), the core task of these projects has been the balancing of these three typologies into a single, coherent, multifaceted site. Focusing on South Yarra — where the author spent a day experiencing the full range of facilities — it’s clear that the DesignOffice scheme achieves an appropriate balance of overlap and separation.
It begins at street level with the Commons Coffee space. Set within the corner of the older building, it connects with the street life like any well-designed café nearby: it feels open, welcoming, bustling in the morning.
Access to the health and work spaces is subtly controlled. They are, after all, restricted member areas, but the design allows for these points to recede quietly rather than become security checkpoints. The Health Club is situated over the next few levels, with gym spaces also below ground, while the co-working core is further up on level four (the fifth floor of the building).
Simpson speaks about the sense that existing health offerings were limited insofar as they seem to fall into two binary categories. “There seem to be these prevalent tropes in the market: either curved pastel day spa or hyper-masculine black and white with neon lights.” Part of the holistic Commons approach was to provide a more balanced interpretation.
The South Yarra and Richmond sites provide very different parameters, with South Yarra responding to its contained, vertical setting. “South Yarra was quite responsive to the existing building,” says Mulvihill. “[We asked], how can we use design to make that feel as intuitive as possible?”
Both end up with a strong sense of journey, part of the sense that the regular member experiences a kind of daily ritualised engagement when using the various amenities in a given day. Circulation is indeed a key part of the South Yarra design, with users subtly encouraged to use the stair as a way of moving legibly between the different zones.
“We spent a lot of time on natural daylight, where to keep it open, where do we need to close it for acoustic reasons, where do materials change… how do you use those material changes, colour changes, placement of artwork and lighting to provide a sense of journey,” notes Simpson. The result is a different atmosphere on each floor and even a change of pace between them without any hard transitions.
A sensitive approach to colour in particular brings a sense of almost deceptive calmness: “We used a really nuanced, curated palette of colours that actually are reasonably strong hues, but are carefully considered in terms of how they sit next to each other,” explains Mulvihill. “There’s a base palette of material richness and warmth,” he adds, while Simpson emphasises the deliberateness of this engaging, understated approach.
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There are simply too many facilities to cover in one article, but it would be remiss not to highlight the bathhouse at South Yarra. Set just high enough to catch hints of street life amidst surrounding rooftops, this space boasts daylight on three sides for its magnesium baths, sauna, steam room, heated stone benches and 6°C cold plunge.
Stone tiles ever so slightly echo Zumthor’s baths at Vals, while small level changes with the floor add spatial variety and richness. “I think we’re just obsessed with changes of level, and how that makes you feel — just walking up two or three steps and looking out of a window… what you see differently and how those changes of level create nuanced spaces.”
The Commons Health Clubs knit together workspace, holistic health facilities and friendly hospitality space across subtly differentiated yet connected spaces.
DesignOffice
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