DINZ德网 | Toranomon Hills于城市中心打造静谧冥想空间

In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s children’s classic The Secret Garden, 10-year-old Mary is guided by a robin redbreast to an old key that unlocks a walled garden. As she explores the garden, she further unlocks the emotions and memories that have been hidden within the garden.

In the case of Toranomon Hills Spa, the “secret garden” is the pool. Visitors pass through the modest approach and head down to the second floor to enter a completely different world: a cavernous pool that cuts off all outside noise, light filtering in through covered windows that only offer glimpses of the outside world. “In its stillness and grandeur,” Paley says, “it has the quality of a temple—a place of repose and renewal, meant to elicit both a feeling of peacefulness and awe. It was important that the pool—whether used for exercise, for relaxation, or some combination of the two—and the journey to the pool were both beautiful and inspirational.” While certainly not hidden away like the garden in the novel, the pool is nevertheless capable of eliciting awe and wonder, especially when accessed by the comparatively intimate and private entrance area.

The tiles along the walls and floor of the pool give the water a deep blue hue; reflections in its surface look almost like ink paintings. Statues have been installed around the poolside, enhancing the temple-ness of the space; meanwhile, certain structures boast eye-catching tilework that calls to mind the interiors of mosques. These artistic touches are the work of the sculptor ShiHai, who was born in Hangzhou, China, and studied both classical Western sculpture and traditional Chinese painting. He has applied a blend of the two styles to the four statues—each titled “changeable muse”—set into alcoves along the walls bordering the pool and to “Ocean Meditation,” a white, elliptical art piece placed in the center of the jacuzzi. The works seem to suggest a space for meditation where East and West coexist.

The “changeable muses” are a series of biologically accurate human figures distorted through simple, powerful movement. All four statues are holding their heads in both hands as if in deep thought. It is as though they are conveying the philosophy underlying the pool: that the act of swimming in a body of water that is at once in the city and not, existing in its own peaceful void, can clear one’s mind and lead one towards a moment of self-reflection. This is a space that allows one to stay connected to both the city and nature through the artificial and natural light entering through the windows while also staying connected to one’s inner self.

Several pieces of gym equipment from Italian wellness company Technogym stand a comfortable distance from each other across the gym’s 200-square-meter floor. The layout—and the space itself—has been designed to give users the illusion of working out in their own personal space.

Toranomon Hills Residential Tower is like a single neighborhood where many different people live and work. This is why tonychi studio took pains to ensure that residents would feel liberated wherever they were in this enormous building. Facilities only available to residents—the Guest House, Library, and Kitchen—have been deliberately designed to make it enticing for residents to invite friends to stay, a practice common in the West but not yet widespread in Japan. The idea is to make residents feel as if the entire building is their home. There are private, semiprivate, and public areas in Residential Tower; the spa is open to the public.

This ethos is about being local but also global; about nature connecting directly to the architectural spaces; and about experiences and attentive services that are born out of these dualities. While the artwork placed throughout the building—and the spa—may be considered beautiful in their own right, they too are important elements of this ethos.