With the term "Urban SPA" someone has ironically defined the place where you can receive a massage while hearing the roar of a subway running under your relaxation bed. In reality, many city accommodations can give a very high-level wellness offer. Urban SPAs are generally born within hotels that extend the offer to external guests.

From an architectural point of view, these structures are often limited by urban building constraints, but they present a refined and soberly luxurious interior design. One perfect example is the Mandarin Oriental Hotel SPA in Milan, built in one of the key locations of the Quadrilatero della Moda and designed to ensure its guests a Milanese experience, respecting the beauty and visual richness typical of the Asian culture.

Renovation works the hotel has undergone had the purpose of adapting the pre-existing spaces to their new function, maintaining as much as possible the original structure of the eighteenth-century building, in order not to undermine its charm and historical value. The result is a design in which the "classic Milanese”, neutral and rigorous, coexists with warm colored materials and finishes.

Clearly we are not in Asia, but the key elements of the Chinese Feng-Shui philosophy permeate the spaces of the whole SPA, spread over an area of 900 square meters and designed to deliver a complete holistic experience that goes far beyond the simple offer of massages and treatments. A real ritual, where the guest regains possession of his/her body, in a setting that invites to meditation and peace. Swimming pool, SPA Boutique, 6 treatment cabins of which two suites for couples, a Private SPA and a Beauty Studio are only few of the proposals that Mandarin Oriental Hotel offers its guests.

Although spreading only on 3 square meters, the Finnish Sauna synthesizes the elegance and purity of the whole environment. The colors of the fading LED strips follow the elegant lines of the slats, exalting their shape and materiality. Indeed, the internal stove adjacent to the marble wall gives nobility and elegance to the cabin, recreating an environment faithful to the classic principles of the sauna: temperature of 90 °C and relative humidity at 10-20%.

The sophisticated design, the interactive concept, the newest technology, the customizable wellness programs, the themed cosmetic treatments and an innovative software for managing the energy-saving equipment make the SPA a flagship in the sector, awarded in the Interior Category Design of the Year, with the European Hotel Design Award 2016.

There are two areas dedicated to private wellness, specular and separate for the male area and the female area, in which two complete wellness environments have been set up: two cabins in Calacatta marble (capacity up to 4 people), two saunas in essence oak, emotional showers and cold reactions, for the correct path heat-water-rest. There is also a swimming pool equipped with a sophisticated ozone system, capable of reducing the presence of chlorine in the water.