Home gyms have become unavoidable lately, creeping into corners with smart mirrors bolted to walls, fold‑out benches wedged behind sofas, and dumbbells scattered under coffee tables. Apartments keep shrinking, hotel suites need to multitask, and most fitness gear still looks like fitness gear rather than furniture. Even the sleekest mirror can’t pretend it belongs next to a credenza when a countdown timer starts blinking, and someone begins doing burpees in the reflection.
Ottagono by architect Giulia Foscari for Cassina Custom Interiors offers a different answer. It looks like a tall octagonal column, occupies less than one square meter, and hides a complete Technogym-powered workout behind faceted doors. Designed in collaboration with Technogym, it debuted during Milan Design Week and will be installed at Hotel du Cap Eden Roc in Antibes, positioning it squarely in the luxury hospitality world where space costs money and objects need to earn their floor area.
Designer: Giulia Foscari
When closed, Ottagono reads like a sculptural floor lamp rather than a cabinet full of kettlebells. The exterior is finished in gradient tones, deep blue fading lighter toward the top or emerald green transitioning upward, with clean facets and minimal seams. At its summit, an integrated uplight washes the ceiling in soft ambient glow. In a living room or suite, it sits quietly under that halo, looking more like art than utility, which seems to be exactly what Foscari and Cassina intended.
Open the doors, and the mood shifts completely. The interior glows in bright turquoise, with a vertical screen at eye level streaming Technogym workouts and a mirror on one door for checking form. Adjustable dumbbells nestle into octagonal cradles at the base, kettlebells hang on polished hooks, resistance bands drape from pegs, and a foam roller stands vertically alongside mobility balls. Foscari calls it “opening a room within a room,” which feels accurate because the inside genuinely reads like a micro gym carved from a single piece of furniture.
A typical session unfolds quickly. You roll out a mat, face the screen, and follow guided strength or mobility work using whatever equipment the program calls for, all stored within arm’s reach. When finished, everything returns to its slot, the doors swing shut, and the column becomes a lamp again. The entire footprint is smaller than a dining chair, which makes dedicating a spare bedroom to a treadmill and rack feel suddenly excessive when something this compact handles a full training cycle.
Ottagono is designed for contexts where space is scarce and expensive. Hotel du Cap Eden Roc will install it in suites, giving guests a Technogym experience without a visible gym. Cassina Custom Interiors positions itself for private residences, superyachts, and boutique hotels where clients expect wellness amenities but want them hidden until needed. It fits the current trend toward fluid, multifunctional spaces where every object does more than one job and looks presentable while idle.
The broader implication is that Ottagono hints at wellness furniture behaving like micro architecture. It treats the gym as a spatial program that can compress into a vertical volume, and it suggests that as homes and hotels juggle more functions per square meter, we might see more objects that act as rooms in disguise. The column becomes forgettable infrastructure when closed, which might be the most useful thing a piece of fitness equipment can do in a living room that needs to function as six different spaces by Thursday.
