Adaptive Reuse: Wellness Club
Repeat Wellness Club by MEAN* opened in Barcelona inside a former commercial unit — the design preserves traces of the building's past while adding modern wellness amenities. (archdaily.com) Parallel to that, Brooklyn firm CO Adaptive is pushing circularity and energy efficiency on new projects in Europe and the U.S., prioritizing maintenance, repair and reusing existing fabric. (archpaper.com)
MEAN* lists AK Studio as the architect of record for Repeat and credits clients Mehrazin Davanipour and Niloufar Hosseinipour; the project photos are by Salva Lopez and the build is dated 2026. (archdaily.com) Barcelona planning rules required the exterior façade to remain unchanged, forcing the design team to confine all interventions inside the historic envelope. (archdaily.com) The interior program stacks active and recovery zones: a ground-floor reception sits between the main Pilates studio and a healthy-food pop-up operated by Nudes, locker rooms adjoin sauna and a cold plunge, and a mezzanine holds infrared therapy, massage rooms and a second studio, with natural clay walls and continuous microcement floors used throughout. (archdaily.com) CO Adaptive was founded in 2011 by Ruth Mandl and Bobby Johnston and now operates from the Brooklyn Navy Yard as an integrated design-build practice that launched CO Adaptive Building in 2021 and CO Adaptive Disassembly in 2026. (archinect.com) (coadaptive.co) The studio’s built work includes the Mercury Store conversion in Gowanus—an adaptive reuse of a 1902 foundry that integrates original timber beams with cross-laminated timber inserts and is cited as an early example of CLT use in New York adaptive reuse. (archello.com) (metropolismag.com) CO Adaptive’s recent initiatives include the SPARC Deconstruction salvage program, a Tiny Queens Passive House retrofit (1,152 sq ft), and recognition as a 2026 Emerging Voices winner and a 2025 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Practice honoree; the firm also contributed work to MoMA’s 2023 “New Publics” exhibition. (archleague.org) (coadaptive.co)
