Gaia Nomaya is a 7,000-square-foot wellness center located in Brooklyn, NY with spaces dedicated to using music and art as therapy. A social wellness environment where guests can relax and listen to music and try a variety of personal wellness treatments. In addition, the space is used for outside events to benefit the neighborhood such as concerts or weddings.
“It is really a multipurpose environment that is based on a healthy lifestyle,” explains Andrew Goldin founder and CEO of Gaia Nomaya, who created it together with his partners Sara Ramirez Loaiza and her brother David Goldin. But the core of Gaia Nomaya lies in its Wellness Womb, or an island of peace with its aura of intense calm achieved using eight Genelec 4430A Smart IP model speakers.
The installation got into full swing when Robert Stern, Account Manager at Guitar Center Professional (GC Pro) spoke with sound engineer and designer Silas Drewchin (of Praxis Audio Design Group), who is friends with the founders of the wellness center and the facility, who told Stern that he had a client, Gaia Nomaya, with a very unique space in which he wanted to install immersive audio.
“I recently spoke with Genelec Senior Technical Sales Manager Paul Stewart, who suggested the new IP speakers, 4430A, and we agreed that they would be perfect for this installation and its use,” Stern said.
Then I suggested the idea of installing the models to Silas and the founders of Gaia Nomaya, who asked me a lot of questions, and then we contacted Paul Stewart by phone, who gave us a very thorough explanation-and everyone was super enthusiastic about the idea. So I ordered them and delivered them to Silas who then took care of the installation on site.
The 4430 models are used to reproduce soothing music on an ongoing basis, evoking forests, oceans and other placid environments. It is Genelec’s ability to faithfully reproduce all those sound experiences that are so important to Gaia Nomaya’s mission.
“The beauty of the system is that the music directly transports people to these environments,” Goldin says. “But they are also excellent for all the other activities we do here, from having a DJ to hosting jazz and other types of music. Genelec speakers do it all – and they sound great.”
There is another aspect in common that unites Gaia Nomaya and Genelec and meets their missions.
“One of the things that makes our location special is that 90 percent of the space is made from repurposed and reusable materials,” Goldin explains, pointing to the facility’s bar and other elements throughout the area that use a 100-year-old, repurposed wooden walkway from Coney Island.
“And if you look around, you see huge crystal giants everywhere, but they are actually glass rocks, called eco rocks that have been recycled from the ocean. We learned that the vast majority of Genelec speakers are made from recycled aluminum, which is very beneficial to the environment.
Once we learned about this-a major brand like Genelec actually planning how they create their projects to safeguard the planet-it seemed very noble and we wanted to get in touch with the company, as their mission aligns with ours. Sustainable is beautiful, and so is the sound of Genelec.”
