What makes a fitness space work? I don’t usually ask this question when I go to the gym or a yoga class. I expect to find rows of lockers to store my belongings, wall-to-wall mirrors, and strangers wearing headphones at complicated machines under bright fluorescent lights. Functional, but that’s where it stops.
Jaybird Studio Kingsway aims to subvert what a fitness studio can be. Designed by Toronto’s Futurestudio, the new 5,500-square-foot location blends user-focused design with an immersive atmosphere. Founded in 2019 by dancer Ariel Swan and Barbie Bent, founder of the Lagree West Pilates studio, Jaybird opened its first studio in Yaletown, designed by the Vancouver design firm Ste Marie. Swan and Bent spent years scouting for a second location before landing on a flatiron-shaped building with art deco and Machine Age influences at the corner of Kingsway and East 17th Avenue. Next door, under an identical chrome marquee, is Analog Coffee’s new Fraserhood location.
“Barbie and I wanted to design a studio that felt like no other fitness space, really transporting you somewhere else,” Swan says. The studio’s otherworldly quality begins with what Futurestudio founder Ali McQuaid and the Jaybird team refer to as a colour story: choosing a shade to apply to as much of the project as possible, which is crucial to developing the space’s visual identity and language. Each location has a different colour story: warm chocolate for Yaletown, vibrant maroon for Yorkville, and emerald green for Queen West. Kingsway is adorned in a deep navy blue, reminiscent of what she describes as “the way the moon reflects off a body of water.”
“We apply this element of colour as a way of creating theatricality in the space and creating a cohesive mood,” McQuaid says. This cohesion is also reflected in the curved interior walls, matching the curved chrome marquee greeting guests outside. A dark-blue microcement finish that shimmers as you move through the space was developed and installed in collaboration with Trevor Manton of 5 Star Finishes, known for its custom venetian and microcement plaster formulations.
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“The reason we curve walls wherever we can is to create a harmonious flow throughout the space,” McQuaid notes, with the intention “to move you in a way that feels natural” before you start your class. “So you’re not confronted with sharp edges and corners.”
Flow is one of three elements McQuaid believes makes a space work, the other two being materiality and lighting. Flow addresses how a space functions, ensuring continuity and preventing confusion when navigating the space. Materiality juxtaposes matte and glossy finishes throughout the Kingsway location, whether it’s soft cork flooring that meets the polished assortment of blue matchstick tiles in the showers or heavy velveteen drapes that interact with the wood grain of the benches, lockers, and shelving.
Lighting is key to Jaybird’s atmosphere and its ethos to get out of your head and into your body. McQuaid highlights the importance of lighting tasks and not people in the lighting design, to have people well-lit but not overexposed to support that journey inward. Both the mat and Reformer classes are done by candlelight under infrared sauna heat. In the mat room, Jaybird instructors lead classes by an altar of LED candles in a mirrorless room to counteract the pressures of a traditional fitness space in which everyone subjects themselves to comparison and scrutiny. It’s a refreshing detail in the Instagram age, too, where post-workout mirror selfies have become the dominant social currency of influencers and everyday accounts alike.
“The mat studio is very womb-like,” says instructor Joshua Haban, who has taught at Jaybird’s Toronto and Vancouver studios. “I always harken to it at the beginning of a mat class that this is your moment to land in a place that feels like home.”
He notes that the darkness and infrared heat add a layer of focus, and he hopes that the people who come to his class feel comfortable moving at their own pace in a way that serves them .
Mirrors return in the Reformer studio so guests can maintain form on the machines, while candles line the wall at the farthest end as if you’re in a temple or shrine. The position of the studio’s speakers supports Jaybird’s music-driven Reformer class, drawing from Swan’s dance background, where the tempo of the music dictates the rhythm of your breath and movement.
The way air moves through a space is a detail Futurestudio ironed out early on with the project’s mechanical engineers: where to place ceiling fans and diffusers to get as much fresh air as possible after a hot class. The diffusers are placed so strategically that you can smell the herbaceous blend of essential oils on the street as you walk in and out of the studio.
Gabrielle Rutman, a film professional in her mid-20s, has been going to Jaybird since 2019, first to help with her scoliosis and later for a warm respite in the infrared-heated studios during Vancouver’s cold, rainy days. “Beyond the thoughtfully curated aesthetic of the space,” she says, “what sets Jaybird apart is the instruction and attention to form.”
This attention to form, both in movement and design, ideally keeps people coming back to Jaybird, and it’s the kind of design challenge that McQuaid enjoys, balancing fulfilling a client’s vision with creating an experience that brings guests out of their daily routine and offering them something special. “People are paying more attention to their own wellness,” McQuaid says. “As a designer, that’s just super exciting when we get to help create that experience.”
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