The Mandrake has announced the development of its new revolutionary spa, Damu, offering various holistic treatments to customers who are seeking solutions to ageing and to promote their well-being. The spa takes its name from the Sumerian God of healing and rebirth, who traditionally symbolised finding cures for the sick using pioneering remedies, representing the company’s philosophy of taking an alternative and spiritual approach to wellness.
Facilities within the spa
The space itself is 700 square metres, can fit 12 people at a time, and additionally boasts the world’s first multi-sensory “Wavess Wellness Pool” and a specialist mud rasul experience, plus treatment rooms and a tranquillity space. Only to be found at The Mandrake, the pool has been designed by partnering technology company Wavess and design studio Metaspheric. It floats the guests in the water and uses lights and sound vibrations to reconnect their bodies, whilst the mud rasul experience involves couples going inside the mud caves and partaking in an engaging and sensual experience known as The Damu Ritual – it includes a steam room, experience shower and two rain showers.
Tala Fustok Studio, the spa’s designer, has worked to incorporate an ethereal concept into the space by comprising the dressing rooms of matt black mosaic tiling, mud micro-cement showers and smoke-stained eucalyptus timber to lean into The Mandrake’s light and dark balance colour scheme. Within the Mud Rasul Antechamber are shapes and textures formed by micro-cement walls that compliment the dark candlelit ambience, whilst the mud caves themselves are produced with back-lit, rock-chiselled surfacing and recessed lighting for a more dramatic and organic atmosphere. A maximum of eight guests can enter at one time, where inside they will use several different mud, algae and salt scrubs, as well as ethnobotanical extracts, which they themselves can choose from, among other personalised supplements.
Another exciting feature for Damu is the Tranquility Room, which landscape architect Bas Smets has planned to have a skylight with surrounding rich greenery, including a Bird of Paradise plant, Beach Spider Lily and Maidenhair Plant, to draw out the floral themes the hotel tries to promote. In the past, Smets has worked to design the hotel’s Jurema Terrace, where he followed the same concept by adding 500 climbers to the surrounding courtyard to give an impression of finding peace in nature, a key aspect of The Mandrake’s essence – which resulted in its namesake.
Treatments
It is possible at Damu to have multiple skin conditions treated at once, providing within their care packages LED phototherapy and Collagen Stimulation Therapy (CST) that uses Derma-pen micro needling, to combine “cutting edge technologies and ancient practices” and “restore youthful radiance” in their guests.
Rami Fustok, who founded the five-star hotel in Fitzrovia, has eagerly anticipated this new opening, commenting he is “delighted we are finally opening our Damu spa. We have done extensive global research and trials to create what will be a world’s first treatment like no other. The feeling guests will leave with will be euphoric and the addition of the spa to the hotel extends our existing creative ethos and core holistic values”.
Fustok assured Damu provides treatments like no other, adding that “There are spas in many hotels and The Mandrake always strives for innovation and creativity…I believe Damu will deliver just that.”
