The Design Director of World Spa: Environment controls five dimensions of your experience.

In this episode of Soft + Savage, Leonid Khanin breaks down wellness as architecture — not escape, but a system for restoring the body and mind.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:26

You are the co-founder and the design director of WorldSpa, which is a 50,000 square foot wellness sanctuary in Britain. But before we get into that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself so that we know who this the genius behind the project is?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Well, there are actually a few geniuses, but well, I will tell about uh I will talk about myself. Uh my background is uh corporate architecture. Then um I I used to design skyscrapers and uh creating urban planning proposals and projects for large-scale uh infrastructural projects in this in the US and outside of the country, but then I switched uh to design museums, presidential libraries, and uh after few, uh which was uh uh the Yeltsin's presidential library in Siberia, uh partially Clinton's library in Little Rocks, and uh the Jewish Museum uh and Center of Tolerance in Moscow, very complex museums. I decided to uh to do something a lot closer, and uh I joined the team of uh developers in um Brooklyn, and together we found the site and uh traveled the world for two and a half, three years, and then spent about four years building.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

They say what they say about you is that you are a dynamic force at the intersection of design, technology, curated experiences, and wellness. So the spa that you've built, the 50,000 square foot spa that at one point was a parking lot, correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Correct, yes.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

So so tell us about the facility because you traveled around the world and you brought back authentic pieces from I know you didn't travel the whole world, but you made a pretty good dent in it.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

So yeah, and again, you know, uh it's uh it's the first project, but not the last one. So we thought that uh, you know, New York is a melting pot. It has cut color cultures from all over, and uh in a way the spa spas and bindings in New York are usually somewhere in basements and not really representing the authentic uh um space uh and uh techniques that uh exist. And uh there are a lot of research in Europe and um and Asia, uh, but unfortunately, somehow we are in luck of uh enjoying them. And you know, when you travel a lot and you see all these beautiful cabins, beautiful traditions, beautiful rituals and treatments, and then you're asking yourself, like, why why it's not there? Why can't New York, with all the you know amount of people, money, and ambition, have this uh in? So at some point this question uh got answered, so that's how we brought it. We traveled for a year and a half, it was pre-COVID, and uh uh we made an accent. We by we, I mean uh my team, it's about five, seven people, uh it depends on uh on the on the trip. And uh and uh um every uh we we made an uh uh accent on certain cultures like Nordic culture, uh like uh uh Eastern European culture of Banas, Nordic culture of soundness and dry heat, and uh aromas, authentic aromas, uh the uh hamams from Turkey and uh slightly but very different hamams from Morocco, and even brought the Japanese osen, which is uh the Japanese version of how to take uh how to take it uh how to take a bath. Uh and it's it's very uh it's an amazing tradition with a lot of insights.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

So when I come, you want to give me a private tour? Is that what you suggest?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Exactly, yeah, because this private tour is a very special feature of our uh facility, and especially when it comes to me, because I I know where all this comes from. And you know, interesting enough, a lot of guests start to join this tour. It's like, can can I come? Can I go with you? And then they say, Well, I've been here 10, 12 times, I didn't know that, but it's changing a lot. So you start to see people, let's say, collecting, let's say they have this uh sauna hats and they collect the snow from the snow room, bringing them to the aroma uh sauna, and then adding snow to the uh juniper walls, like the one that you have behind you. And what's happening? The snow, when it melts, it creates humidity. Humidity gets an endurance where you start to breathe it, and the room is changing. It's like you know, not just adding volume to it, but it's becoming uh I call it five-dimensional, because what we do, we control the environment, but by building it 3D around you, it's beautiful. Then we add uh music, so you meditate with the music that's 4D, and then we add aroma, which is natural, and it comes from different kinds of woods, the herbs that we add to the ceiling in certain places, and we replace them to feel fresh, and that is 5D, so you know the 6D is only what's in your mind, and that is only in your control, but everything else is controlled for you.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Well, not only did you bring the traditions, but you also brought the authentic materials, correct?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

That's true. In order to originally, actually, the concept was that we'll bring materials or studies, and we'll be able to find a lot of local materials and local craftsmanship that will help us to uh build a lot of cabins here in New York in States. But then the more we were traveling, the more we were understanding the complexity of this uh topic, we understood that it's a lot better, or at least to start with, by engaging the uh the um craftsmanship from the source, build the cabins there, assemble there, test it there, then disassemble it, put it in a container and ship it. So, you know, the first two weeks uh of uh COVID, we received about 10 containers from all over the world that we had to uh unload and then put together. So it was like a major interesting exercise of logistics and uh and uh then set them up to uh to work uh in an authentic setting.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

But wasn't the one from Morocco, didn't you build that with mud and straw? Wasn't that a subtle?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

That's that's actually different. Yeah, Moroccan has its own story. Each of them, they're you know, I treat them as babies, each of them have their own interesting, uh sort of uh uh sometimes funny, sometimes not never tragic though, uh, but mostly uh funny uh story. The clay and hay is not Moroccan. Clay and hay is uh sort of like it's an exception uh in all other cabins. You're traveling the world, geography. With the clan hay, you're actually traveling time, it's a time capsule. You're going back 2000, 3,000 years back to the play uh to the times of the uh uh Adobe Houses, and when you see it in this uh mud or clan, we call it clan hay, uh also have a nickname skiff, because we we were originally planning to uh draw uh ornaments of the skiffs right on the clay. And uh was a very cool idea, but then I thought, like, you know, if you go back in in time, so many cultures had the same tradition of building this clan he uh half-sphere uh arches and create a fire in the middle, or bring the hot stones and pray, uh, do surgeries and uh uh and uh variety of different treatments there. So going to Klan Hey, the closest culture you can get geographically right now that it exists will be a Mexican Temascal from uh from Yucatán.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

And and the Finnish Sana, didn't you bring back the the wood from Finland?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah, there was uh actually not only from Finland. I was consulting with uh with the uh uh people uh in Helsinki and uh not only, and when I told them about my research of the variety of the woods I can have an access to, they said, well, choose your palate because there are no restrictions. If you will stay within the common sense and understanding, pick few kinds of wood that is hard to get in Finland. And for example, one of the woods that is from seven different planks that used in Finnish sauna. We do have a Chechen cherry, it's a cherry tree from Chechnya, the Caucus of uh you know, Cocos Mountains. So, and it's not uh it's you know, I know exactly what it is, I know what it gives, and it's a very special tree, let's say, but it's there for a reason, as many others.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Yeah, it's it's it's fabulous. You know, I when when when I would graduated from college, I put a pack on my back and I traveled around the world by myself for a year, and at one point I ended up in Turkey. And they and I had no idea what a Hamam was, and this this group of people brought me to the Hamam, and I remember that it was just this huge, it almost looked as if it were a church. It was a huge dome, and there were just shards of light that were coming down. And uh and you would just lie on the floor for maybe a half an hour, and and the and the hamam was ringed with these women who were second and you know, like Botticelli, uh, you know, Botticelli figures, and you would just lie on the floor until you had been rendered into an amoeba, and they would slide you across the floor and they'd put you between their knees and scrub you down and then, you know, throw cold water on you and bring you back again. And that was very evocative of what was going on in Rome and in Greece and in all these ancient cultures, where not only were they using them for medicinal purposes and for and for hygiene, but they also use them as social meeting places. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Absolutely. And I went through that experience. I I I I really enjoyed how you described it because it's really aligned with exactly what I felt when I was in uh in uh uh Turkey. Yeah, it was, I think, many uh it was many years ago when uh Istanbul is one of my favorite places, even if you know if you have have a chance to spend even a day or two on the way somewhere else, like Central Asia or going uh to Eastern Europe, it's just an amazing place to start your tour. Uh and um uh and the uh but the hamams there, yeah, they're authentic, they're beautiful, and they are brutal. Like the way they do this treatment, you will never forget.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

I remember them now, it's true, yeah. And so is there a social aspect to what you're doing here?

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Yeah, it's uh it's it's it is actually all about social aspect, and that's what I call here the um uh sort of uh you know, post-COVID renaissance. People need to socialize, and for a lot of people, it takes a lot of time to decompress and get from there. Oh, yeah, I work from home, I don't want to leave my room, I feel very comfortable in the triangle, like the kitchen, my home office, and my bed. And you know, especially in New York when where a lot of people live in a tiny small apartment, and uh, you know, for them to get out to a park is one thing, but to get into a social place where they celebrate life and not only enjoying it, you actually making uh a certain uh things to your body that makes you a lot healthier, and you get this push of energy that is uh it's just very hard to describe. But I'm lucky because uh every other day when I'm in a facility and I'm going through the floor and I see hundreds, and we get hundreds and hundreds of people every day, and the great thing the facility is big enough for them to feel uh you know not to bump into each other and to feel that they have enough room to like a private space and enjoy themselves. In certain places, they can meditate, in certain places they are sitting in like dozens, and in certain places we actually educate them on the authentic traditions, like uh we have a grande banya, which is the Eastern European version of sauna with uh high humidity, it's kind of dark and it fits up to 65-70 people. It's huge, it's the largest bany on the continent. Uh uh, and uh yeah, and the the with every two hours we have uh so-called events where guys with uh vanicy, which is the branches, so the like the old branches coming in with uh snowballs from a snow room and the cold water and create something uh that is uh so special and educational and healthy, and uh it's it's like a small show, 15 maybe 10 minutes, but it's just enough, you know, every two hours to uh to let people to you know to educate them, and uh some people actually run into this uh showmen or like uh uh viniki masters, and then asking for like can I get the same treatment, but just like you know, the full thing? And they we have a variety of very special treatments like honey and salt scrub in combination with the vineki heat, you're not gonna get it anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Well, and the other thing that I want to avail myself of when I go to Brooklyn is you've got a Japanese and a Korean head massage. Yeah, and I was reading about that. My God. The exquisite morsel.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

It's uh it's a continuous research. We're bringing a lot of new uh techniques. Uh, some things are authentic, some things are high-tech. Like we have a water jet uh super high-end uh uh bed, which is meant for people. There are a lot of people who are coming and saying, like, I really need a back massage, I just don't want anybody to touch me. So, how can you do that? Well, you can now you can, and it's uh it's available here, and there are many other things, and the team is continuously uh searching for new treatments and uh seeing how it's gonna work in combination in an ensemble with all other uh offerings that we have.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

So, are you gonna do this in other places? Is this just yeah?

SPEAKER_00 17:12

The the idea is, and we are in search, uh there are so much uh uh there are so many available, you know, vacant spaces in Manhattan. There are so many big stores that are leaving the city. And the cool thing is uh a lot of people from a real estate community start slowly but clearly understand that when you bring facility like that into your building or into your block, it just changes a lot of things, and it's not just another gym, like a lot of people have like five gyms in one intersection, which is amazing. Where I I I understand that a lot of people want to and they want uh to have choices in New York, it's all about choices, but bringing facility that has this wellness component in combination with all these longevity studies and uh uh certain research, uh, they are opening in there are many brands that are opening in the city around Flatiron District. Uh I'm more interested in areas like sort of like closer to Upper West Side or uh maybe Columbus Circle. We'll see. It's um it's in work, so we have a lot of pro people approaching us saying, like, I have 45,000 squared, I have 35, and it's you know places that seven or five years ago we were not able even to imagine being available for that. So it's getting there. We'll open probably another one somewhere in in Manhattan, and um it's gonna happen within the next two and a half, three years, because now we know what would we want, we know where to get it, and uh we might add certain special features to a Manhattan location, certainly as you know, business developing and people have their appetites.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Yep. So the motto for Soft and Savage is that there are those who are faced with challenges, there are those who seek challenges, and Soft and Savage is the universe, where both excel. How would you say that you were a soft and savage candidate with what you've just accomplished?

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Well, challenges uh we uh we uh we went through construction at the COVID time in combination with a lot of uh me misunderstanding of the whole uh bathhouse spa uh uh facilities from let's say from financial institutions, they don't understand yet what but they are getting there. Like, what is it? Why is it so big? Where's the hotel around it? Uh and when you start to explain it, they're saying, like, well, I want to see papers, I want to see proof, and you can do it, you can show things from Europe, but they don't look at that saying, like, well, it's you understand, it's here, so it's really like the local like local mentality that created a challenge or some kind of resistance. Are you building Brussels or something like that? You know, oh, it's somewhere in Brooklyn. Oh, you sound Russian, and things like that. You know, it's it's like a lot of uh misunderstanding, but now when there is a thing, it's there, it's available, and it's open for public. Because a lot of guests who are coming here, they're saying, like, well, it's members only, I think, because they see the quality of construction, and uh they think it's like you know, it looks like very expensive hotel spa somewhere in uh in Arizona or maybe somewhere in Dubai. But that that that's what makes it so cool. So combination of this misunderstandings uh and uh challenges uh in uh in uh in a strength with the mission that we have an ambition uh for this brand to um to grow. Uh I think that's where that's what makes us one of your kind.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

And this is open to the public, as you say. This is not just a private club.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Oh no, no, you can just go get a general admission, uh weekdays, Sundays. Uh I think we're only closed one day in the year, which is Yom Kippur, and it's understandable. But every other day, you're welcome to come, and uh if any would like Ago and we have a lot of people driving all the way from Connecticut, New Jersey, because again, not that much of uh variety available, and people are curious, and then they come back, and then they come back every other week.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah, and I think another stigma that you had to overcome when I was a kid, we used to go to Studio 54, and then and then afterwards people would go to Platoh's retreat. And I I only went there once, but it was you would just see these people who were sitting there in petri dishes, and it was just, you know, snorting cocaine and smoking pot, and it was just and this is clearly at the way at the other end of the spectrum. This is this is the realization of the exquisite morsel.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

So the time is different. Uh the uh younger uh crowd is all about uh staying healthy and uh staying young forever, and we cannot blame them. And uh why not? Especially if it's all available within within us. We don't need to add pretty much anything. Uh it's just it's just this centuries and thousands of years of culture that was available, and now we need to take advantage of it in combination with our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Uh yeah, and and reintroduce it. And the other thing is when you and I met at the at the Norwegian embassy, I came late, but there was a woman who was doing a presentation, and she was talking about a facility that is not in on such a grand scale as this, but that she had she had developed this uh this this facility in Oslo. And that they had done a a um what do you call it? They had done a a study beforehand. And 65% of the people in Oslo suggested that they were they were severely lonely and that they were very, very depressed. And she put together this this facility and people started to come from the community. And it has now significantly reduced to the amount of loneliness that people are experiencing there. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

That's uh that's a good illustration. And I think she mentioned also that they already have 60 facilities within how many years. So it's it's interesting, they're small but very efficient because uh, you know, uh you can uh because they're mostly on the water, so you can park it or bring it to any pier and basically change the environment about this, and especially you know, in the winter, the when the weather is not nice, uh, but take advantage of it, you know, to put like a nasty weather in combination with the beautiful, like uh cold deep uh jump uh from the sound and then getting back, what can be better? So, yeah, we sort of share the same vision and mission, just on a different scale, and um but it works uh the same way, yeah. And uh the amount of people coming and coming back, that's what I'm very excited about. I see a lot of people on the floor saying, Oh, that's my tenth time, or that's my twelfth time. And then we've been open for what two and a half years, and um I feel like people enjoying it. It's and for some people, actually, I see them every other day. They're members who somehow added this uh um uh to their daily routine, especially people who work night shifts before they you know go back home. They uh and in order uh to avoid traffic and make and get the push of energy and health, they come here for a few hours. And they're they're like a power a part of our family now. So I I feel like it's uh it's it's exciting to see new faces and then they're becoming you know part of your day-to-day hello.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

So do you know the concept third space?

SPEAKER_00 25:58

Uh third space.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Have you heard that? Third space?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Not yet, where is it?

SPEAKER_01 26:01

Well, I had heard it years ago. I have I have adult boy-girl twins, and and when they first left university, they did the this 50,000 square foot climbing gym, Brooklyn Boulders. And there were a lot of people there who were talking about third space, third space, and I had no idea what it was, and then I didn't hear it again until I was at the at the embassy the other night. And what it is, is it's it's um there's the first space is home, the second space is work, and the third space is is getting together, you know, it's socializing. And and unfortunately, people don't go to school anymore, people don't go to work anymore, people don't, you know, they the only place that people can meet one another is in bars. And this is this is a much healthier version of third space, because as people are coming out of COVID and they're starting to, you know, they're starting to get together again. They want some place that's healthy and that's nourishing and that's clean and that's that's that you know that's that's doing something for them physically, mentally, and socially. So I think this answers all of that.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah, I'm glad uh that uh you know we we we we can do it, and I'm glad that popular uh popularity from the younger uh sort of generation of uh it's uh it's uh heading here. Uh I see and uh well I see guys, but uh like a lot of uh people uh uh most of our guests are actually uh like ladies, and uh but uh uh which were not intended, which is happened because you know they like the cleanliness and they like um uh a certain design aspect, and you know, everybody now wants to take a cool picture of yourself and send it and post it. And we're we we're we're not against it. I know in some places you're prohibited, and but here somehow it it works, you know, when people are getting too loud, we uh gently ask them to stop, but it's just it's easy to get excited, and you see, and for uh my mission and sort of like seeing people be getting happier, because I feel that in um like you know, in uh in the Russian literature, Dostoevsky mentioned that uh the uh beauty will save the world, uh and that's how that was partially my mission when I was an architect designing and changing skylines, but then I understood that mission uh the uh beauty will not change the world, the be the or save the world, what what's gonna happen is love will save the world, and in order for people to get more of love, they need to be a little more relaxed, a little more or a lot more happier than they are. It's very hard to do it in the city uh when there are so many challenges around you. But when you go to a place like Spa, and this spa is public space with all those cabins, you see other people, you see this beautiful um you know three-dimensional environment. You breathe it different aromas from uh around the world. Uh, you see other people enjoying it, you you're becoming a little happier, you're becoming and with that, you're becoming a lot more loving. So it's a simple but very clear mission of saving the world with a small ability to make people a little happier and a little more loving to each other. And that's what we do, and I think we do it well based on the amount of the percentage of returning customers.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

So I think it's so necessary today. God, god.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Yeah, yep.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Well, thank you very much for coming on Soft and Search. It was a pleasure, it's a pleasure knowing you. And I'm going and I'm going to the facility after the after Mother's Day, I'm sure that you are booked to the nines for this weekend.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

Yeah, well, yeah, Mother's Day is packed. Like two days that are big challenges for uh for the team, but we're ready. Like first year we were not, we were like all in pieces. But now, after all of that, uh we know the uh you know the Valentine's Day and the Mother's Day. It's a perfect storm, and we're on it.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Yes, good for you, good for you. Well, I wish you many more destinations.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Uh good, thank you. We're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Thank you. If you liked our show today, please like and subscribe. And thank you very much for joining us on Soft and Savage.