Virgin Active Bondi Westfield
At Westfield Bondi Junction, Virgin Active has unveiled its first global social wellness club – a departure from the traditional gym model and a decisive step towards community-led wellbeing.
Designed by Sydney-headquartered Quattro Architecture in collaboration with surfaces company Cosentino, Virgin Active Bondi reimagines the fitness environment as a luxury social destination grounded in ritual, recovery and connection. Material innovation underpins this shift. Central to the project is Dekton, an ultra-compact surface developed by Cosentino through a proprietary process that mirrors the natural metamorphic transformation of stone. The result is a dense, low-porosity surface resistant to heat, moisture and abrasion – attributes particularly suited to wet, high-traffic wellness settings. Carbon neutral and sustainably produced as part of Cosentino’s broader environmental commitments, Dekton enables durability and responsible specification to sit alongside aesthetic refinement.
“This Virgin Active project has been really exciting because it is the first of its kind,” says Michelle Hosking, co-owner and senior interior designer at Quattro Architecture. “All the other gyms we’ve done for them have been very traditional, and this one was their first social wellness club. The brief here was all about community coming back together in the space as well as the gym, and wellness was very much at the core of this project.”
Virgin Active provided what Hosking describes as a strong conceptual launch pad centred on ‘barefoot luxury’, a sensibility that informed both materiality and atmosphere. From there, the design team drew deeply from Bondi’s coastal landscape. The notion of ‘surfscape’ became integral to the spatial narrative, evoking the textures, tonal shifts and quiet tactility of sand and stone shaped by water.
The arrival sequence sets the tone. Blade-like features frame the shopfront, catching and refracting light as visitors ascend or descend the escalator, creating a subtle play of shadow and movement before entry. At the reception, an inset of Dekton Nara – specified in close consultation with Cosentino’s local team – anchors the threshold moment, its soft veining and mineral depth establishing the material language that flows throughout the club.
Crucially, the open gym and wellness zones are intentionally delineated. Clearly defined circulation paths separate high-energy training spaces from areas of restoration, allowing the club to function as both performance arena and sanctuary. Within the amenities, bespoke detailing elevates the everyday. Custom-made vanities crafted in Dekton Nara are paired with dry grooming stations set within slender blade walls, offering members smaller, semi-private niches alongside a larger communal grooming area.
The sauna stands as the project’s tour de force. While traditional saunas are typically fully timber-clad, the scale of this space prompted a more considered approach. Sections of timber are substituted with Dekton Nara, introducing both durability and a refined softness to the environment. Adjacent to the spa and cold plunge, a heated slab niche unfolds across three tiers—a sculptural retreat where the ultra-compact surface retains and radiates warmth, demonstrating the performance capabilities that informed Cosentino’s selection for the project.
For Pauline Martin, senior architecture and design sales manager at Cosentino in New South Wales, the collaboration was as much about performance as aesthetics. “My role was to assist Quattro Architecture in selecting materials that would be fit for purpose throughout the space,” she explains. “This project demonstrates that you don’t have to compromise on the beauty of material, on performance, on sustainability. You can have it all in one product.”
Indeed, Dekton Nara became the foundation of the entire palette. “We were looking for something that was soft and tactile, but emulated some luxury,” Hosking notes of the sand-inspired beige surface. For Martin, the sauna encapsulates the project’s ambition. “It’s the room I’m most proud of,” she says. “I just love the level of detail with all the faceting and the fact that it is used in an area where performance needed to shine. But also, it adds a lot of softness to the space.”
In Bondi, wellness is no longer confined to the gym floor. At Virgin Active’s first global social wellness club, material innovation and coastal sensibility converge – demonstrating that performance, sustainability and a renewed sense of community can coexist within a single, carefully considered interior.
