An acronym for the Roman saying salus par aquam, today the term 'spa' is still used for places where certain water-based therapies are carried out, but has come to include a range of treatments associated with physical and psychological wellbeing. The recent proliferation of spas has entailed a complete rethink of the architectural features associated with such places, by which the new interior designs borrow numerous semantic cues from the ancient cults of community bathing, interpreting them to create arenas of multi-sensory experience, with increasing emphasis on narrative features that provide settings for the new rituals of body care.

«The work of Gianni Veneziano can be taken as an emblematic case of the unexpected developments and turbolence that have agitated the panorama of the designing of spaces and objects in this end of the century. In Veneziano's work, the primary characters of a situation in frenetic mutation can be recognized. But, above all, one discerns the conditions in which a contemporary designer must operate, first and foremost being the loss of sense of the traditional polarity between «form» and «function», which marks the definitive departure of the 1900's.»