Olympia Gym

The front of Olympia Gym is a triangulated screen standing proud of the building, lit red along every edge of the frame. From the road it is the whole identity of the place.

Red is easy to use badly on a facade, because it is the colour most likely to read as a warning, not a welcome. What makes it work here is that it is applied to a line rather than a surface. The screen is drawn in red, not washed in it, so the building keeps its geometry.

The training floor is a dark industrial space with services left exposed, and the lighting is a grid of continuous linear runs fixed directly to the soffit. There is no ceiling to recess into.

A gym floor wants high uniformity and low glare in a specific way, because someone on a bench is looking straight up. Running the fittings in long lines above the circulation routes, not the benches keeps the brightest part of the ceiling out of that view, and the matt black soffit stops the rest bouncing back.

The facade and the floor were bought as one commission. AL SHOLA ALMODEA designed, supplied and installed both.

A gym runs longer hours than almost any building type: early mornings, late evenings, no closed day. Rated life at a given temperature stops being a specification detail and becomes the basis of the running cost.

It also changes the failure pattern. Fittings on a continuous duty cycle in a warm room fail as a cohort, within a few months of each other, so replacement becomes a project rather than a maintenance call.