How Do You Design A Gym?

1. Reject the 6 design trends that have the fitness industry locked in a death spiral of better sameness and avoid with great prejudice boutique or luxury design.
2. Create Your Own Unique Power Brand.
   1. Gym Power Branding is the integration of a brand aesthetic across all the features of your facility resulting in a unique and uber-cool gym model that upstages competition.

                                                                                            Cuoco Black 2015

“Employing Design Trends Blurs Your Brand — Power Branding Makes Yours The Market Standout”

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CASE STUDY

“Cuoco Black’s design helps us close the deal on the presale tour, hands down, end of story”.                           Vince Consalvo, Owner, Mid City Gym

Client: Mid City Gym established in 1962 is arguably the oldest continuously running gym in the country predating Joe Gold’s 1965 opening of his Venice Beach landmark. It was home to notable fitness celebrities including Dave Draper, Lee Haney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Concept/Inspiration: The design was inspired by an old photograph hanging in the gym endorsed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sparked by Arnold’s illustrious career we cultivated an idea that a gym design reflecting the excitement of one of his Hollywood Blockbuster’s, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, would make a fitting concept exhibiting energy and excitement…. powerful motivators in a gym environment.

Context: Situated in one of the busiest neighborhoods in the world, Times Square and 42nd Street, the gym’s design would need to exhibit powerful aesthetics in the highly energized and vibrant Theater District.

RULE #1 Have A Concept

Every business model should have their own unique concept. Inspired by the Terminator morphing out of the floor (image left)  we specified a cobalt blue and orange floor pattern for the gym’s reception area that ran across the floor, up the face of the reception desk, along its top, up the wall and across the ceiling returning back to the floor from where it began. Concepts lead to innovative and unique design opportunities.

RULE #2 Space Planning

Space Planning is the layout of the rooms and features of your facility. The gym’s reception desk is oriented on a sharp angle (image right) in contrast to the straight walls in the room. Angles provide a subliminal and kinetic type of virtual energy in a space. In addition, the desk is designed to resemble the rear part of a gun known as the “action” which back-links and reinforces the brand and concept of the gym.

RULE # 3  Telegraph Fitness

We designed the gym’s logo (image left) in the spirit of fitness by virtue of a animated figure lifting the M over its head in a classic weight lifting exercise. In addition, the brand colors dominate the logo design. When prospects enter the gym’s reception area (image right) there is no mistaking that they’ve entered a fitness facility. The photograph or Arnold over the door (which inspired the concept) is digitally enhanced to reflect the brand colors.  Lesson: Telegraph Fitness

RULE #4 Smart Construction Practices

Designer’s love to squander their client’s investment’s with relentless design gestures throughout your facility resulting in nice photos padding their portfolios (and egos). In contrast, we have left all of the concrete ceilings, walls and columns intact and only specified design elements that were necessary resulting in the savings of tens of thousands of dollars for the client’s build-out. Better still (and another advantage of creating a concept) the sparse aesthetics reinforce many of modern and bleak aesthetics in the Terminator films.

 RULE #5 Back-Link

Every element of your design should endeavor to back-link and reinforce your brand concept. The orange mirror cardio wall for the gym is cut to resemble the bullet-hole-pocked-mark walls of the Terminator film (image left). This cardio wall mirror concept is novel, beautiful, cool…and unlike any cardio wall in any gym in any State in the US.

RULE # 6 Retail

Futuristic metallic retail mannequins resemble the metallic T-1000 Terminator and provide a super cool T-Shirt display worthy of an upscale department store. Lesson: Market your products like the luxury department store pros.

 RULE #6 Locker Rooms

Men’s Locker Room

Women’s Locker Room

The men’s and women’s locker room for Mid City Gym validates our argument that locker room design does NOT have to embrace the boutique design trend. Colored panels, metallic curtains, concrete, plastic laminate lockers, and picture lights above them, meld into a powerful design aesthetic that reinforces the brand. This Is Gym Power Branding at its finest. The circa 1960’s Italian scrolled mirror in the women’s locker room leavens the harshness of the concrete and provides a subtle yet feminine aesthetic for the room..

In summary: Envision your own unique concept for your gym brand….integrate all manner of back-linking and reinforcing of the concept…reject all design trends and specifically boutique design….deliver a unique model to the market that which the competition cannot copy…..dominate your market.

Brand Don’t Trend

Learn more about Mid City Gym: Mid City Gym

About Cuoco Black:

Cuoco Black is a design academic, interior designer, entrepreneur and natural bodybuilder. He’s a former faculty member and holds a BFA with Distinction, and a Professional Design Diploma, from the New York School of Interior Design, ranked 4th in the World for superior interior design curriculum’s by US News and World Report. Cuoco Black is additionally the designer of the Experimental Cocktail Club, Paris France, rated one of the top 20 Bars in the world by foodandwine.com.