Relax Underground

Project: Relax Underground, 2018
Location: Táboritská 10, Praha 3
Client: Relax Táboritská
Architect: Lenka Míková
Cooperation: Vítězslav Danda, Kateřina Blahutová
Civil Engineer: Petr Benedikt, Ateliér Okulet 
Area: 120 m²
Photography: BoysPlayNice

The approach was to create a world of its own, with a bit mysterious, slightly bizarre yet still elegant and most of all intimate mood. The interior is inspired by the aesthetics of David Lynch movies, the main corridor makes a tribute to a scene from Under the Skin. Intimacy is supported by the play with lighting effects. The rough masonry is contrasted by a minimalistic treatment of all the new surfaces that are united by a single color. To emphasize a "luxury" feeling, there is also an additional decorative surface, almost at the edge of a kitsch – which doesn‘t matter in this case...

The visitors seeking an asylum are welcome by inconspicuous street entrance and then led downstairs into the dark to a safety gate, which is a symbolic threshold. Once allowed they continue by a long corridor with a slightly confusing lighting that cuts them off from the outside world. At the end there is a light over a reception from which they continue to one of the five rooms.

There are three major rooms, each with a specific "water feature" and its own color: the blue one is "Royal" with a large jacuzzi, the green one is "Relax" with a bathtub, the red one is "Hot" with a show-off shower. Each of them has also its own stone texture. The other two rooms are smaller, clad like a wooden cabin with a bold, almost exotic wood texture.

The rooms are logically dominated by custom-made beds with distinctive fronts, they also feature some practical details but in a discreet way – who needs them, finds them. Generally the design is not so much about the specific use of the place, it’s more about the aim to make a parallel underground world with an appropriate atmosphere where visitors could forget about the life outside, at least for a while…