Designing for Modern Family Life

For decades, hospitality has largely been designed around individuals.

Hotels, restaurants, members’ clubs, gyms and workplaces each serve a particular part of our lives. Families, meanwhile, are expected to move between them.

But contemporary family life is increasingly challenging those boundaries.

Parents work more flexibly. Wellness has become part of everyday life. Children’s activities, socialising, exercise, dining and work increasingly overlap. Yet the places we inhabit rarely reflect that reality.

Our work with The JJ Club in London explores a different model.

The project brings together hospitality, wellness, fitness, co-working, dining, childcare, children’s activities and social spaces within a single members’ environment.

The individual ingredients are familiar. What is interesting is how they work together.

A parent might work while their child takes part in an activity. They might meet for lunch before one moves to the gym and the other to a different part of the club. Several journeys across the city become one connected experience.

This creates an architectural challenge that is less about fitting uses into a building and more about understanding the relationships between them.

Which spaces should connect?

Which need separation?

Where should families come together, and where should they be able to pursue entirely different activities?

Circulation, acoustics, visibility and adjacencies become fundamental to how the building works.

Perhaps this points towards a broader shift in hospitality.

The next generation of successful destinations may not be defined by how many amenities they offer, but by how intelligently those amenities support the way people actually live.

For families in particular, that means creating places where work, wellness, hospitality and time together no longer need to compete.

The opportunity for architecture is not simply to accommodate modern life. It is to make it easier.

Project References: The JJ Club, London