Le Pilates Circle — Pilates studio, Casablanca

A 200 sqm Pilates studio in Casablanca

Le Pilates Circle is a 200 sqm Pilates studio designed in Casablanca in 2025 by AMARGUS, interior architecture studio in Morocco, laid out in three sequences: a reception, a changing room and a main room holding around ten reformers.

The entrance is not a reception hall: it is the first movement of the session. The body has to slow down before practice begins, and the space does that work.

The partitions lose their angles. A matt terracotta plaster, applied as a continuous drape from wall to ceiling, absorbs light instead of returning it. The reception desk, carved in one piece from pale stone along a bean-shaped profile, has no sharp edge. A light cove runs along the top of the curve and washes the wall with grazing amber light: no visible source, no glare in the line of sight.

The mineral grey porcelain floor provides the counterpoint, a cool and quiet base beneath the warmth of the walls.

The changing room, in oak and cane

Moving from street clothes to practice wear is the most private moment of the sequence. It is handled in solid wood rather than tile.

A wall of pale oak lockers with electronic locks faces full-height walnut panelling, paced by the vertical grain of the veneer. Two low benches in solid wood and woven cane, modernist in inspiration, replace standard equipment furniture. A sculpted plaster bas-relief — waves and folds held still — serves as the single artwork.

The backlit perimeter cove keeps light levels deliberately low, the opposite of the direct lighting found in conventional gym changing rooms.

The reformer room: a ceiling like a landscape

The main room holds around ten reformers. Here, the architectural subject is the ceiling.

Three layers of sculpted plaster unfold in free curves, each underlined by an amber light ribbon concealed within its thickness. Between the layers, a constellation of fibre-optic points punctuates the surface. The whole composition reads lying down, back on the mat, eyes upward — that is, in the position actually held during a session. Here the ceiling is the studio's façade.

On the end wall, a backlit pale stone disc ringed with a luminous circle acts as the focal point for the entire room. On either side, black lacquered niches with integrated lighting break the continuity of the wood.

Storage, palette and design stance

The opposite wall is given over entirely to storage: an oak library with shelf lighting where balls, rings, rollers and weights are composed rather than stored. In a studio this size the equipment is permanently in view — better to make it part of the decor.

The wide-plank oiled oak floor and the terracotta leather upholstery of the reformers pick up the palette of the entrance: the project closes on itself.

A fitness space is usually designed in white and mirror. This one takes the opposite stance — mineral materials, warm woods, leather, entirely indirect light and low levels. Performance does not need to be lit like an operating theatre.

Plaster terracotta and pale stone · Wood pale oak and walnut · Leather terracotta reformer upholstery · Floors large-format porcelain and oiled oak · Light backlit coves and fibre optics · Textiles woven cane.