Healthworks fitness center: Chestnut Hill, MA.

Judges' Verdict: "Just as Healthworks develops its client's inner beauty, the designers took a drab suburban office building and sculpted a beauty!"

There are times when a longstanding client-architect relationship blossoms into an increasingly satisfying series of successful project developments. While few and far between, these relationships represent the kind of chemistry that every club developer hopes for, and the kind of client relationship that most architects can only dream about. Mark and Patricia Harrington, the founders of Healthworks Athletic Clubs and architects Prellwitz Chilinski Associates (PCA) Inc., have spent over a decade making beautiful Midwest music together, delighting an all-female clientele with athletic facilities that bring local men to their envious knees. With razor-sharp focus and vision, Healthworks has now launched four profitable athletic clubs in the greater Boston area, and one non-profit club serving underprivileged women in the inner city.

"This is the fourth club we've worked on for Healthworks," said Wendy Prellwitz, AIA. "By now there is enough of a trust between architect and client that when we recommend certain materials or colors to achieve a particular effect, they are willing to try going along with our lead ... after so many years of working together, we are able to get inside the clients' mind in many ways, and sense what they are trying to do from a business perspective."

In the Chestnut Hill project, Healthworks' goal was to launch its most upscale facility to date. The Chestnut Hill branch represented Healthworks' first standalone building (the other four facilities shared buildings with other tenants), and served a higher-income, educated female community, where many of the women spent large portions of the day at home and in the neighborhood.

The club's aesthetic and vision would differentiate itself based on clientele, and would architecturally approach something of a cross between a hospitality and a fitness club aesthetic. The client fancied a Zen-like retreat where members could refresh both mind and body in a holistic activity center. As a benchmark, Prellwitz submitted design boards to the client referencing Asian bathing house imagery and materials--an immediate spiritual trigger-point for relaxation and refuge from daily life.

But meanwhile, back at the ranch--or shall we say, back at the drab concrete behemoth--this dreamlike universe of renewal was slated to enter one of the most monolithic, uninspiring block structures in the city ... yet somehow this script ends in a Design Showcase award. Was shock therapy on the treatment list?

More specifically, the 1960s-era office building providing the artistic raw materials for Chestnut Hill Healthworks looked like a cross between an inner city high school and a border patrol holding facility, with its blocked masonry walls and pencil-thin window cavities. Topped off with painfully-low ceiling heights and cramped hallways on the interior, the project amounted to an undertaking worthy of a true artist.

Hoisting the beautiful Chestnut Hill butterfly out of its musty cocoon, architects Prellwitz Chilinski Associates (PCA) Inc., masterfully modified the raw materials on both interior and exterior to transform the vibe of the space both inside and out. The architects broke the exterior monotony with broad second floor windows, and softened the San Quentin-like central tower with an offset glass entryway to its left side.

Without changing the actual ceiling heights, the architect added internal depth to the space with wide openings in the floor of the second story and by drawing natural light into activity areas. Uninterrupted lines of sight between first and second floor create a loft-like architectural aesthetic, and create the illusion of higher ceilings and wider spaces. Perhaps the most dramatic of these spaces is a virtual column created by an elliptical hole in the second floor matched by an elliptical exposure of the ceiling slab on the second story. The view upward from the lobby's reception desk on the lower level is the longest unbroken space in the building, and the ceiling view is warmed by an ochre-colored ceiling paint capping the virtual column. In the building's two main U-shaped stairwell openings, long origami-style chandeliers extend between first and second floor to further draw attention to the lengthened space.

While few perhaps take the time to sit in the club's whirlpool after exercise, the location and design of this masterpiece is perhaps the "piece de resistance" of the entire facility, according to the architect. Seen by every member as she passes through to the showers, the glowing onyx stone at the whirlpool's back coupled with the limestone panels leading up to the bath create a cloud-like euphoric vision, almost as soothing to look at as to enjoy first-hand. "The panels are backlit and glowing, as if to suggest a sort of a lifting out of this world," said Prellwitz, who explains that the owners were as interested in this piece for the message that it sent to their clientele as they were in its particular function.

All tensions checked at the door, the experience is unreservedly soothing at Chestnut Hill Healthworks, from the hotel-like reception area to the dazzling whirlpool and spa. Soft color tones, natural textures, materials, and minimalist design features keep mental noise to a minimum from the moment a woman escapes into this hideaway oasis.

The lobby's Cafe Oasis, with its moss-colored fabric walls provides a backdrop for low profile, minimalist furniture and elegantly-placed Japanese flower vases. Opposite the cafe, a curved wall with reed-inset panels and inset Tokonoma-like flower boxes leads members into all other activity areas. Similar curved forms and Japanese-inspired imagery repeat throughout the club's architecture, where the consistent themes of natural materials, natural lighting, and glowing earth tones draw members into a connection between mind and body.

The now friendlier tower element on the building's exterior has become a focal point for the community. Now adorned with the Healthworks emblem, it hearkens to all female passers-by, as if to say, "restoration inside!"

"Chestnut Hill is something of a cross between a hotel and a California health spa," said architect Wendy Prellewitz, AIA. "The California health spa is the part which references Asian overtones without being wholesale Far East in its design. The hotel aspect of the design speaks to a target audience that is accustomed to service with hospitality industry flair. We sort of joined the two, and it works beautifully."

Credits

Architect: Prellwitz Chilinski Associates (PCA) Inc., Wendy Prellwitz, AIA, principal-in-charge. General Contractor: CAFCO Construction Coordinators, Ed McCabe, project manager.

Project HIGHLIGHTS

Loft-like, open architecture with exaggerated openings and widened floor transitions.

Exterior: Masonry and glass (modified original materials).

Interior Materials: Limestone, glass, bamboo, fabrics, bronze tiles, reed-embedded wall panels, rubber flooring in fitness area; stone-like floors and wood paneling emulate Japanese bathing experience; limestone shower walls.

Notable Spaces: Hotel-like reception desk, backed by translucent backlit reed wall panels. In the spa area, rear-illuminated onyx stone panels wrap around one third of a luxurious whirlpool. Glass mosaic tile and limestone walls finish the room. The club's activity studios draw natural light into the second floor through broad windows, and light passes through to the rest of the fitness facility through glass interior walls.

Design Accents: Elliptical, bamboo-surrounded hole in the second floor fitness center opens a line of sight to ochre-painted first story floor design. This and other large openings create an illusion of high ceilings and open space. Origami lantern chandeliers also extend the illusion of height in the oversized stairwell openings. In the lobby, Tokonoma boxes inset within reed-paneled walls showcase minimal flower arrangements in mossy green backlit boxes. Uplighting is used throughout the club.

Square Footage/Areas Affected: 35,000 sq. ft., including four group exercise studios, weight training and cardio rooms; Life Fitness and Hammer Strength circuits; a nursery, treatment rooms, and a spa with whirlpool; eucalyptus steam room, sauna, showers, and locker room facilities; and the Oasis Cafe and kitchen.

Healthworks At-a-Glance

HW Concept: All-women health and fitness club chain, located throughout urban areas in the greater Boston area.

Accolades: Fitness magazine--top 10 gyms in America 2004, Best of Boston 2000, 2004; Best of Cambridge 2002; Best of City Life 2002 (Boston Phoenix).

Little Known Fact: The center and its four partner facilities support a non-profit Healthworks Foundation Fitness Center in the Boston area, which serves to help disadvantaged and homeless women and pregnant teens improve their health and fitness on scholarship. The Healthworks Foundation is supported by a percentage of revenues from the other four clubs.

15 minutes of Fame: Having received a free three-month membership by the HW Foundation, HW member and cancer survivor Peggy Melanson carried the Olympic Flame through Somerville on one leg of its cross country journey to the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics.