interviews
Habits Culti - A Day Spa in Milan
Interview with Daniele
Cantoni
From Wellness Design Magazine
Issue N. 3 | 2004
Early this year, "Habits Culti" was opened.
It's a day spa in the city center, just a short distance
from Corso Vercelli with a refined, essentialist feel
and it was created by Daniele Cantoni, founder of Spa-Concept.
 The
ground floor is home to the Café-Restaurant
Noy, with it's sober design, a shop that sells flowers,
plants, chocolates and other similar products and an
automobile sales shop. A broad, simplistically but elegantly
designed staircase with crystal parapets and a skylight
above it leads to the sub-basement level where
the spa is located. The reception desk bears the same
relaxing, soft tones as the walls and appears to be
situated in a sort of town square, surrounded by chairs
and benches placed under wooden umbrellas, covered with
cream-colored material.
The entrance to the women's area is on the left, along
with an office and an area for private treatments. The
men's area, a separate section running parallel to that
of the women, is off to the right. There are also two
"common rooms", with floating tubs [used alternately
by women and men] and a relaxation room.
The walls and floors of the spa's dressing rooms are
in beige tones which compliment the warm feel of the
wooden lockers and the ivory curtains around the changing
areas. The decor is completed by a large bathroom. A
hallway leads to the first rooms of the SPA, which are
the two "common rooms", where you will find
a "cloud" tub in the center for flotation.
These rooms can be used with or without a technician.
This area is completed by two other treatment rooms
for women and one for men.
The next area is made up of steam rooms, finished with
strips of light-colored marble, which were individually
designed, cut and lain in beautiful patterns. The turkish
bath has a vertical slit in the wall, from which a ray
of light enters, reproducing a natural sunlight effect.
This is achieved by the use of a ceiling projector,
whose light is refracted and directed by a vertical
crystal. The two single whirlpool baths are made of
marble and are shaped like chaise lounges. They are
self-sanitizing and all of their programs can be
managed by a single switch.
The distance between the two tubs has beens studied
in order to allow for dialog between the two users without
the invasion of either one's privacy. They were positioned
taking into account necessary inspections by technicians
and you can therefore easily walk around each one.
The shower room has no doors and has "blade"
showerheads and ones with variable streams of water.
There are also two areas where you can sit and use cold
fog. This area is all on one level, with the floor tilted
slightly towards the shower drains. The ample hamman
room, with its heated walls, completes the steam room
area.
A unique air recirculation system helps to maintain
a constant temperature in all the rooms. The designer
Daniele Cantoni is known for his essentialism and elegance,
as well as his care in developing rooms that are easy
to clean and maintain. Each of these qualities is particularly
evident in this particular area of the SPA. The final
room that you come to is the relaxation room, whose
lounges and wooden floors make the guest feel particularly
welcome.
 Three
questions for Daniele Cantoni
What was the first thing you thought of in designing
the Habits Culti Spa?
Before beginning to design a new spa, we usually have
a series of meetings with the owner to determine what
his "real" objectives are. We then provide
him with a meticulous business plan that supports his
objectives. In this case, a series of factors [the property,
the neighborhood, the already-existing contacts]
caused us to opt for a design that would aim to reach
a very high class market. Today [a few months after
the spa's opening] we can say that we made the right
choice and it has been reinforced by the current client
base. To reach our objective, we designed a spa that
could be regarded by its clients as somewhat of a "little
vacation getaway" in the middle of the city of
Milan. At the same time, we also wanted it to be a place
where a businessman could spend some time "meeting"
with a client [as they did in the ancient Roman baths],
rather than always having to resort to the office or
a restaurant. For this reason, we designed facilities
that can be used by two people at the same time, in
order to facilitate both objectives.
What materials did you use?
Marble, glass and wood, but mostly marble and of a single
color, that was prepared and laid using special techniques.
For example, the making of the two hydro-massage
tubs [which are shaped like chaise lounges] using solid
blocks of marble. To obtain a uniformity in the different
shades of color, our marble cutters began by selecting
directly from the mining site the exact piece that is
best for our purposes. They then work on it with laser
and cut and number each piece individually before laying
it and this enables us to make curves and shapes that
are normally very difficult to make with marble. All
of the wood floors have a drainage system to allow them
to air out well and to enable the area below them to
be cleaned. Smoked glass was used for the steam room
doors, for dividers in the internal areas and to cover
some walls.
 What
characteristics tell us that a facility was designed
by Daniele Cantoni?
Aesthetically speaking, its extreme "purity"
with regards to the shapes and materials used, its use
of sunlight, even resorting to the use of refractors
when its impossible to use direct sunlight. To help
you understand what I mean, let me say that we've never
designed nor installed a fiber optic "starry sky".
You can tell by the extra attention given to the choice
and layout of the different facilities, which are in
synergy with modern ideas in the field and in harmony
with the property's "mission". We are known
by the fact that our architectural projects follow a
clear business plan [which we develop] rather than vice
versa.
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