Technogym Headquarters
Umm Suqeim, Dubai · 2022
The building was a bank. The first job was structural: taking apart a vault too large to be removed in one piece.
The ground floor follows Technogym's retail concept by Antonio Citterio, the same one used in every Technogym boutique. Everything around it is mine: the building, the facade, the experience centre for trade clients on the first floor, the offices on the third.
The client asked me to change the facade with work that was light in structure and heavy in effect. I widened the windows, aligned them, and brought the front into one order. The showroom is now read from the street.
Three floors, three functions, three sets of finishes. One budget across all three. Most of my decisions were about where that budget went, and in what order.
It was built through Covid, with the Technogym team in Italy unable to fly. Deciding what could be resolved at a distance and what had to wait for someone on site took as much of the project as the drawings did.
Collaborating with Marianna and the MyPickOne team on our Dubai HQ has made this the most successful project our company has undertaken outside of Italy.
The boutique is travertine: wall cladding and floor. It is the stone that carries Italy with it — think of Rome — and it sets the register of the space, which is treated as a retail room and not as a gym. Around it, light oak floors and slatted wood ceilings keep the exhibition floors warm.
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