Beyond Rest

Beyond Rest is a floatation centre set inside an industrial warehouse in Collingwood, Melbourne. Its float tanks serve a broad client base seeking both relaxation and rehabilitation, part of a growing wellness sector with clear physical and mental health benefits. FMD Architects conceived the interior as a temple of serenity, organised through sacred geometry that shapes both the overall plan and the finer detail of the custom joinery and light fittings.

Sacred geometry draws its forms, patterns and proportional systems from nature, and has informed sacred structures across many religions and cultures for thousands of years. Here it elevates the spatial experience to match the heightened mental state reached through floating. Each tank sits within a volume proportioned to a hen's egg, another expression of that geometry, and these volumes radiate outward to form a circular plan around which visitors circumambulate. Waiting areas, chillout zones and other support spaces flow from the pods, so the rooms appear to have no end as you move through them, echoing philosophies of infinite, cyclical life forces.

The continual movement of the curving walls reinforces the elevated state achieved while floating, then gently reconnects the visitor to the ground on the way out. The journey passes through a sequence of spaces that grow steadily less geometric and more abstract, encouraging a sense of disassociation from the outside world and an invitation to travel further within.

Completed in 2017 over a single level.

Architect: FMD Architects (Fiona Dunin). Collaborator: Alice Edmonds. Photography: Tatjana Plitt.