SkinCareLab
New York, New York

Completed 2001

Design Team
Brian Messana, Toby O’Rorke

Collaborators
Mechanical Engineer: M.A. Rubiano
Lighting Designer: Zerolux

The design of Skin Care Lab represents one of our earliest experiments in marshaling minimalist details and modern materials—stainless steel, glass, and fluorescent lighting—to create an atmosphere at once simple, sensual, and ethereal. The subdued palette is introduced in the reception area, just beyond two front doors of frosted glass etched with the name of the day spa in clear glass. The glass doors are set back from the angled corridor, as if the entry were carved into the space. When the spa is closed, a large stainless steel door, flush with the corridor wall, closes in place. The treatment rooms and functional spaces of the spa are organized around the perimeter, forming a central hall, which is bisected by a wall of stainless steel. This stainless-steel spine, an organizing device as well as storage container, is segmented into individual floor-to-ceiling units, with bands of light from recessed fluorescent tubes emanating at the junctures. Reminiscent of a Dan Flavin sculpture, the light strips march through the clean, gallery-like space in rhythm, reflecting light off the stainless steel and soft white walls.

Two massive, battered concrete columns, original to the Soho loft space, are the yin to the yang of the metal wall—the dense, brooding monoliths against which the stainless-steel volumes dance in light and clarity. With their cool white walls, warm wood floors, and limestone shower enclosures fronted by planes of frosted glass, the spa’s treatment rooms echo the dual leitmotifs of translucent and opaque, matte and shiny, abstract and functional. With the simplest of moves and the humblest materials, Skin Care Lab puts an entirely modern complexion on the spa experience.

Photographs by Elizabeth Felicella

Press

2001

Brodsky, Daniella. “SkinCareLab.” City (Summer 2001).

Urbach, Henry. “Skin Deep.” Interior Design (April 2001).

“AIANYS Design Awards.” New York State AIA News (Fall/Winter 2001).

Awards

2001

Award for Interior Architecture, American Institute of Architects, New York City

Award of Merit, American Institute of Architects, New York State