Architects are rethinking the age-old concept of the public bathhouse. Rather than the spa, a haven of luxury and privacy, this ritual focuses on community and now on cultural change. Jane Withers, curator of the exhibition Soak, Steam, Dream, writes in this excerpt from the introduction that the idea is that “bathing is both a state of being and an act of purification.”
“The role that bathing plays in a culture says a lot about that culture’s attitude toward human relaxation,” writes historian Siegfried Gideon. “It measures the extent to which individual well-being is seen as an integral part of social life.” Gideon argues that bathers fall roughly into two groups: hygienists and vitalists.
For the former, purification is the purpose of bathing; for the latter, ablution is merely a preparatory ritual for the journey through water. From the baths of ancient Greece and Rome to the Islamic hammams or European spa towns, from the onsen in Japan to the saunas in Russia or the saunas in Finland, bathing has historically been central to social life, and baths have been places of health and pleasure; in addition to providing basic hygiene, they have also been places of social, cultural and political exchange, as well as places of relaxation and recuperation. However, with the spread of private bathrooms and a more technical and clinical approach to sanitation, the pendulum has swung from rejuvenation to hygiene. We have largely been cut off from this rich cultural heritage, losing the bath’s role as a public space and the sensory dimension of architecture designed to allow people to steam or to see silence and reflection through the steam.
As a longtime o-furaholic (the Japanese word for someone addicted to hot water) and someone with a deep penchant for rejuvenation, I’ve spent years basking in the shadows of great water cultures: the former Roman baths of rural Tunisia, far from the bustle of the city, now used as Turkish baths; the onsen of Japan, where sulphur springs bubble into icy river water; and the Sandunov Baths of Moscow, where the baths roar like dragons and bathers wear geta to avoid contact with the scorching tiles. The renewed interest in this rich historical panorama is helping to reimagine the bathhouse as a public space and reconnect us with water in an age of increasing scarcity. Unlike modern spas, which are almost always places of privilege and luxury, the hammam has more inclusive roots. New models are emerging in response to changing social and urban conditions, as well as shifting boundaries between public and private life, personal and public space. It is also necessary to create wellness spaces that follow different principles than the unbridled consumerism of the beauty and leisure industry.
If we look at bathing culture from a long-term perspective, the late 20th century seems like a dark, dry age, a decline of most ancient and public water rituals; gyms, swimming pools, bathhouses, and beaches eclipsed the leisurely pleasures of public baths. Several factors contribute to this: baths have historically been the subject of debates about hygiene and morality, particularly in Anglo-Saxon culture, while vestiges of Victorian prudishness underlie modern fears of promiscuity and debauchery. This moralizing resurfaced in the 1970s and 1980s with the spread of homosexual bathhouses, and the AIDS epidemic eventually led to the condemnation and closure of many municipal bathhouses in the United States and Europe. Every culture has rules and taboos regarding hygiene and bathing, but in many cultures, such as Northern Europe or Japan, the dichotomy between pleasure and sin is different, and bathing does not occupy the same moral level.
Artist and bather Leonard Koren has been writing about bathing culture since the mid-1970s, promoting bathing as a state of being and an act of purification. In Undesigning the Bath (1996), Koren analyzes the “subjective qualities of a good bath”: “Taking a bath is about being in tune with your biorhythms: the inhalation and exhalation of your breath, the speed with which your blood pumps through your veins, the slowness with which you tire… The mechanical world of objective time—seconds, minutes, hours—is irrelevant here. Good bathing requires the ability to linger, to linger, and/or to do nothing without guilt.”
The Romans called this state otium, a state of productive idleness, as opposed to aimless leisure. In Japanese culture, the art of bathing has been refined over the centuries, and hot water can plunge the bather into a state of bliss known as yudedako. Literally, the word means “cooked octopus,” alluding to the bather’s flushed face from the scorching heat and the physical changes that occur when the mind is released from everyday life and transported to another dimension.
Of all the new baths, Peter Zumthor’s Therme Vals has perhaps done the most to revive bath culture and the ancient principles of the hammam. The Vals thermal baths are built on thermal springs in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. Its majestic architecture is an expression of the physical properties of the mountain and the thermal waters that bubble up from within, leaving mineral-rich orange and green streaks on the quartzite. But the building itself is essentially a framework for a carefully orchestrated bathing ritual. Bathers move between rooms, experiencing different temperature sensations – warm and cool, hot and cold, as well as the olfactory and auditory sensations of the water – which rediscover the ancient meaning of the spa (salus per aqua, or healing through water).
Although these baths (pictured here) come from different cultures, types and traditions, they all share the belief that bathing is a catalyst for community cohesion. The Japanese describe this relationship between bathers as “brothers to brothers.”
For example, Raumlabor’s Gothenburg Sauna was recently installed in a disused container port, catalysing the transformation of the site into a new urban neighbourhood. The striking corrugated iron structure, reminiscent of a reshaped shipyard hangar, and the procession of naked bathers create a powerful image of the human body as a harbinger of social change. Similarly, the temporary Barking Baths project in a poor London suburb harks back to an earlier tradition of public baths as a means of strengthening society. In 19th-century Britain, progressive social activists founded public baths for the poor, modelled on traditional Ottoman hammams. The new bathrooms were designed not only to promote hygiene and health, but also to achieve social change. At the height of the bathing craze, there were over 100 Turkish baths in London alone. As shrinking urban living space forces us to rethink shared and communal activities and the boundaries between public and private space, these institutions are beginning to make sense again.
In remote mountainous rural areas of China, where sanitation remains limited, Mr. Bao has built single-sex bathrooms to improve sanitation and also to meet community needs. It is a low-cost community project in which men’s and women’s toilets are located in a wing, protecting a partially sheltered space for community gatherings.
In The Ten Commandments of the Public Bath, architect and sauna enthusiast Tuomas Toivonen describes the special importance of the sauna as a public space: “The architecture of the sauna should not only create a space for people to bathe, but also a space of anti-conflict, anti-competition and anti-hierarchy.” Unlike most other public spaces, the sauna is a place of synthesis and reconciliation, where people shed the armor and clothing of everyday life and habitual norms of behavior melt away with the steam, making the sauna a powerful refuge and agent of change. Toivonen’s Now Office’s project to create Kulttuurisauna (Cultural Sauna) in Helsinki is a tribute to Alvar Aalto, who wrote earnestly about the need for a new sauna culture back in the 1930s. It also mentions Greek and Roman baths, where bathing was the link between the physical and intellectual, and gymnasiums, libraries and discussion halls were part of the bath complex.
The baths here are a reminder of a return to the term “wellness” that Siegfried Giedeon championed at the beginning of this article: one based on the reunification of body and mind, and thus of society, rather than more modern ideas of “wellness” that encourage endless individual self-improvement. In contrast to the declining statistics and growing sense of foreboding that abound in news reports of droughts and floods, bathing allows us to reconnect more closely and deeply with water through our senses. It is, of course, no coincidence that this is happening at a time when climate change is forcing us to acknowledge our precarious relationship with water and the reality of a future in which it will be scarce.
Wash, Steam, Dream: Rethinking Bathing Culture features contemporary architects and designers at Roca London Gallery until 28 January. Free admission. rocalondongallery.com