Fitness body, erotic and accommodation: You Fitness Gym. Fernando De Rossa (Guerra De Rossa Arquitectos) + Architect Pedro Livni. By: Gonzalo Carrasco Purull.

Warm up.
There is a photograph showing the interior of the Villa Tugenhat (Brno, 1929-30) in the middle of a workout. It’s an image – which for anyone familiar with minimally architecture of Mies van der Rohe – is disturbing. In the place where should be found to be, is a row of young children doing push-ups under the watchful direction of three adults. One of them – apparently a nurse – a girl attends to execute the exercise correctly, forcing the position back in action we guess painful. Young people are wearing shorts and no shoes. A thin towel is the only element of mediation between the cold stone specified by Mies and feet of children. On the other hand, adults who witness the class – one of which is sitting behind him support in the hard stone surface of the wall – are dressed so we can guess the cold that makes the interior of the Villa. It is an anomalous picture, because everything here is no requirement for the body. Physical demands of running exercises body in clothes too tight and inflexible. Requirement of bodies that are received by a hard and cold. Of bodies lined up as a colonnade, appear to duplicate the cruciform columns designed by Mies. In the presence of missing furniture, moving furniture and other associations that appear to generate abnormal, as the tiny chair at one of the columns. An abnormal image also an architecture for which the place to take the body is always that of a spectator who walk or find their place in a high element of mediation design, such as a chair or armchair Mies.

Fitness, a matter of appropriateness.
This list of accommodations that have exercised the body in architecture will be modified during the twentieth century, is today a condition prevalent in contemporary culture.
Thus, the fitness, rather than obtaining an appropriate body, will become the means by which to reach the desired body. Desire, leisure, will be terms that will expand the exercises to a hedonistic dimension of life. Where the architecture will be modified so that gives shape to these spaces. Places that will become the scene of an erotic exercise, where the surfaces receiving the body is adapted not to reject it or demand it – as is the case of the Villa Tugenhat – but that will replicate its surroundings, molding their lines, looking for the perfect match between container and content.
This relationship to replicate the body is exercised, has been reflected in recent developments carried out by the sportswear industry. This is the case of Adidas ™, who, through their online TechFit ™ – presented at the last Beijing Olympics 2008 – reaches an almost complete adaptation that protects the body, reaching to indefinite separation between the body is exercised and a surface that not only offers resistance to movement, but also regulates what is removed and what is admitted to that body in motion. Smart skin athlete’s performance improves by the soft, the flexible, rigid, extremely thin, the porous, softer, smoother.

Bodies that contain other bodies.
This relationship is tested by the Uruguayan architects Fernando De Rossa and Pedro Livni, who on his project for YOU Fitness gym, work from the creation of a place where physical exercise is combined with an area for leisure aesthetics and physical care.
Located within the Montevideo Shopping Center, at the place formerly occupied by a kart track – YOU Fitness gym can understand how a body that is held in another body.

Recognizing the structural grid of the mall as an active field, the architects organized the program so make each one of the sites support the presence of existing structural columns, changed the relationship we have of these spaces. Moreover, each of these areas – solarium, sports shop, equipment room, gym, hair and body area, spinning gym and changing rooms – are articulated by the presence of a second body. East – which houses the reception and the cafe – it acts as an intermediary between the public realm of Shopping and more control of the exercise rooms.
This body into another body, has its curved edges, thus differentiating this other body that houses it. No voiding or structural grid of the building, nor for the mall perimeter. Adapting – through the mediation device is receiving – in the manner of a track suit. In a year of full fitness.

Superficial.
This element of mediation is made by a screen consists of profiles Profilit ™ glass, which act as a membrane that allows light, rejects the view and the step, while at the same time organizing the tours. Using this element, the means is performed without friction traffic flow inside the gym.

A condition that is not devoid of qualities, it activates a series of sensory conditions with the bodies that exercise. It is at this point, is where the architects proposed building works from an erotic exercise, an adaptation of the eye and hand. Where the surfaces are treated with care. Where the smooth glass that divides the temperature of the wood that gets the body in the locker room, the black tile that gives texture to the reflections and clever use of lighting – that eliminates glare – acting on the perception these spaces generate, amplifying its sensory qualities of light, color and texture.

However, it illuminates the adequacy of this project to your order is – ultimately – a very contemporary design that we have the behavior of the body in these spaces. A concept under which the body must always be in motion. This comes at a reception and perhaps gets too close, unable to support the installation of seats. Or in the location of a café that displaces its perimeter chairs serving. With doors that are perhaps too close, opening and closing, making be a temporary situation and hurried. In a list dominated flows, the acceleration of bodies on the spinning machines, following the frantic pace of jogging machines. An experience that involves the adoption of a fast time, where almost no time to stop at places where at most we have the accommodation to the timeliness of a sensory active surface. VKPK.
YOU Fitness Area. Montevideo, Uruguay.

Owner: YOU Fitness Area.
Authors: Pedro Fernando De Rossa + Livni
Contributors: Virginia Miguel, Veronica Oliver.
Contractor: architrave.
Location: Montevideo Shopping Center. Montevideo, Uruguay.
Built area: 1,380 m2.
Year of design and construction: 2009.
Technical Advisors:
Heat Advisory: Mr. Luis Lagomarsino.
Photographs: Martin De Rossa.