64North | Heated Room Santa Monica

A few blocks from the Pacific, Heated Room’s Santa Monica studio is an extraordinary new space whose sculpted contours embody and inspire the vigorous energy of this growing Pilates brand. Defined by sinuous form, shaped by ever-changing light, suffused with intense heat, and filled with pulsing sound, the studio is both a place for focused, personal practice and a platform for collective activity and experience.

From the street, a strikingly tall lobby beckons, flanked by twin walls whose towering, curved contours encircle visitors entering, drawing them in. The studio is wrapped in venetian plaster, a delicate blend of soft, tawny browns and dusky rose hues. These hand-troweled surfaces extend throughout, molding an enveloping tactility and unfolding discovery. At the entry, a voluminous desk greets visitors, its plaited surfaces clad in handcrafted aubergine tile and brushed copper. Beyond is a small retail space, its bronze millwork opening to a view of the streetscape outside.

A serpentine passageway surrounds the studio, its supple arcs rippling in plan and section, evoking corporeal motion. Its carved silhouette recalls cliffs and dunes, an unfurling veil frozen in time. Tapering to fit between adjacent rooms, widening to provide space for rest and reflection, this liminal space is an experience at once defined and diffused. A constellation of lights sparkles across the whorls of the darkened penumbra overhead. A secondary space incorporates reformer-based instruction in a more intimate setting on the studio’s upper floor. Three rounded apertures link upper and lower levels, their oblique trajectories inscribing intricate openings into the solid escarpments of the corridor walls below, uniting disparate spaces through elliptical frames, enigmatic glimpses into what lies beyond. Restrooms and support spaces are tucked beneath, including showers whose bejeweled luster is illuminated by the muted halo of the plaster domes overhead.

At the project’s heart, sweeping walls of maple envelop the primary studio’s volume, their warm, natural tones shaping a space both intimate and expansive. Tiered oak platforms rise around the central instructor’s platform, their edges outlined in light and multiplied by two long walls of mirrors. A vaulted canopy levitates overhead, ascending and descending in soft waves of smooth troweled plaster, a new kind of cathedral for the body and spirit. The ceiling’s bowed boundary arcs away from the room’s perimeter, bathing it in an encircling glow. Sleek vermillion speakers thrum above, the luminant brilliance of their nacelles polished to perfection, their unyielding beat that floods the studio. Taut curves vault downward to twelve aluminum panels, their radiant energy heating the room to nearly 100 degrees, tracing an abstract, inverted topography of white light and heat.

S E R V I C E S

Architecture, Interiors, Lighting Design, & Identity

T E A M

P H O T O G R A P H Y

64North

A D D I T I O N A L P H O T O G R A P H Y

Dan Simantov