15 bathing architectures you should know, from the 19th century to today

If “cold” bathing is a way of life and an everyday habit in Sweden, the Moorish-style pile-built complex with its domes, arches and tiles on Varberg beach, which is widely frequented in fine season, has been a landmark for locals and tourists since the late 19th century.

The building, consisting of a pile-structure extending over the sea and characterised by peculiar décor, turrets and spires, is one of the finest examples of Sicilian Art Nouveau. A place actively frequented by Palermo society since its origins, it hosted the Charleston restaurant that gave it its name for a few decades since the 1960s. The recent renovation (1990s) aimed to restore the original character of the structure and its polychrome decorations, although the historical furnishings designed by Ernesto Basile have been lost. 

The legendary Art Deco-style “Bains Pompéiens” complex with its concrete columns, polychrome decorations and marble evokes the splendour of a society that strolled elegantly on the renomated Planches boardwalk with all the oddities of different eras, from Josephine Baker with her leopard, to Kirk Douglas on a bicycle, to Queen Elizabeth in a Rolls Royce. On the beach side, four hundred and fifty cabins, each named after an (American) film star because of the cinema festival that has been held in the town every year since 1975, invite the visitors to some little identification.

Located in the seaside conservation area, Bagno Balena represents one of the finest examples of Viareggio's late Art Nouveau. The two-storey building with a U-shaped layout consists of a main building block and two lateral buildings on the rear side towards the beach. The main body houses shops on the ground floor and flats on the upper floor, the secondary one, at the rear, a restaurant on the ground floor. The entrance to the bathing establishment is placed centrally to symmetrically divide the volume.

The building, created for hydrotherapy and recreational purposes, with a vaguely metaphysical character inspired by rationalist neoclassicism is characterised by a central layout and rounded shapes, and rests on a platform suspended above the water level and accessible from a pier. Today it is the venue for exhibitions and conferences during the summer and is a strongly distinguished landmark on the Senigallia waterfront.

The Art Nouveau “pied dans l'eau” complex, perched on a rock and connected to a panoramic terrace with spectacular sea views and a diving board, is one of the most iconic places on the French Riviera. Recently refurbished (by Yann Priout), it includes three restaurants: the glossy Le Plongeoir, the contemporary Le Rocher and Le Vivierdi, on the level below, almost touching the water. 

The gigantic complex built as part of the urbanisation of Arenzano's pine forest was conceived as a sort of “unité d'habitation” for holidays, with various functional programmes (residences, shops, public spaces, car parks, bathing facilities) distributed in monolithic buildings connected to the sloping orography and organised around courtyards and squares to keep the scale ratio contained. Over time, the structure was abandoned and today, in an advanced state of decay, it is still waiting for a new life.

The neat, linear structure with a concrete base and ribbed roof, conceived by Vacchini as a filter between the urban ecosystem and the lake had undergone several modifications and additions through the years, until it was brought back to life in its entirety, by Atelier Rampazzi's recent renovation. The studio removed the incongruous volumes that had profoundly changed the connection between built and natural context and reorganised the interiors in consideration of contemporary functional and system requirements.

The complex, which stands on the site of a former seaside establishment, consists of a two-storey circular pavilion with a terrace and a domed metal roof, a building with café, shops and a restaurant, and a metal and wooden pier that starts at the level of the terrace, crosses the sandy shore and stretches out towards the sea.

Literally named “bathing ship”, the public swimming pool carved out of a ship and located in the Spree River follows in the tradition of the old open-air baths on the river. In addition to diving, the facility offers moments of relax in the heart of the metropolis, on the hammocks of the wooden pier, on the deck chairs of the artificial beach and in the recreation area with bar and DJ set.

Known as the “Snail”, the complex consists of the main building made of azobé wood suspended on stilts in the middle of the sea, accessible by a pier that gradually rises to a five-metre diving platform, and an auxiliary building with toilets and changing rooms on land. The circular layout creates an enclosed space sheltered from the elements.

The historic Art Deco pavilion on stilts – already rebuilt in place of the 19th century original one – damaged by decades of neglect, abandonment and most recently a serious fire, was reopened to the public in 2017 thanks to dRMM’s renovation project that purposely avoided a textual repetition of the original building’s forms. A platform almost devoid of buildings and completely unobstructed towards the sea, in order to guarantee maximum flexibility, houses two volumes: a restored Victorian pavilion at the entrance and a new wooden building with a rooftop viewpoint housing a civic centre and a cafeteria. The star of the project is therefore wood which, partly integrated with salvaged elements that survived the fire, covers surfaces and furniture. 

The UK's first (four) beach huts for people with disabilities were designed as part of a regeneration project for Boscombe. The design is inspired by the seaside imagery of a seagull with unfurled wings, here enlivened by multi-coloured stripes to suggest the traditional windbreak. The modules, assembled off-site, were placed in a single day.

The bathing platform is part of a larger programme of regeneration of the harbour area, conceived in order to breathe new life into the context by incorporating new functions with minimal building impact. The project involved the creation of a triangular-shaped structure made of wooden slats that includes swimming pools, diving pools, saunas, accessory spaces, sunbathing areas and a panoramic terrace. 

The complex located on Lake Urriðavatn in eastern Iceland harnesses the region's geothermal energy to create a unique bathing experience. Built volumes embedded in the ground blend inseparably with the surrounding landscape through the green roofs, larch wood cladding, warm water pools and floating pools on the lake with their irregular shapes inspired by the openings in the frozen water.