Soak Steam Dream

The exhibition curated by Jane Withers at the Roca London Gallery explores a new bathhouse culture through the work of contemporary architects and designers.

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“Soak, Steam, Dream” explores a new communal bathing culture through the work of contemporary architects and designers. The immersive exhibition, opening as part of the 2016 London Design Festival, features international bathhouse projects by Peter Zumthor, Shigeru Ban, Skene Catling de la Peña, H3T architekti and Kengo Kuma, that re-imagine the bathhouse as a social space, factoring in smart water use for the 21st century.

Through photography, film and archive objects, the exhibition reflects how this rich panorama is being re-created in a new bathhouse culture that is helping us, in an increasingly water stressed era, to revalue and reconnect to water and use it more responsively and responsibly. Unlike today’s western spas, invariably a place of privilege and luxury, the bathhouse has more inclusive roots, and models are emerging in response to changing urban conditions and reduced living spaces, shifting boundaries between public and private, the personal and the communal.

“Soak” traces the tradition of bathing in hot springs and “taking the waters,” from the Greek and Roman Baths to the Japanese onsen and European spa towns, spa being the acronym for “salus per aqua,” or healing through water. Featured projects will include Peter Zumthor’s magnificent public baths for Vals, as well as a series of baths that blend seamlessly into their natural surroundings, from Germán del Germán del Sol, Termas Geometricas, Chile Kengo Kuma, Kogohi Bathhouse, Japan Raumlabor, Allemänna Badet, Sweden 2 Sol’s Termas Geométricas in the national park in Chile, to Kengo Kuma’s Japanese zen onsen overlooking the sea.

The “Steam” section of the exhibition reveals a variety of approaches to the sauna: from the gritty Gothenburg Public Sauna by Berlin-based Raumlabor, made from recycled materials and conceived as a catalyst to transform the former industrial port into a new urban neighbourhood; to the surreal mobile “pop-up” saunas by Czech architects H3T, that have been suspended from a bridge or placed in the middle of a lake; to Löyly by Avanto Architects, Helsinki’s first true public sauna, which opened in June 2016.

The final section, “Dream,” references great bathing traditions, such as Sinan’s Ottoman hammams, and new bathhouse architecture. Included is the bathhouse designed by Skene Catling de la Peña for a private house inspired by La Petite Maison – An Architectural Seduction, the 18th century architectural treatise and erotic novella by Jean-Francois de Bastide; and the Barking Bathhouse by Something & Son, intended to revive the tradition of the bathhouse as community space which still existed in the poorer districts of London up until the 1970s.

Archive material will include research by American critic and bathing aficionado Leonard Koren. His magazine, Wet – a guide to gourmet bathing, founded in 1974, was influential in the revival of alternative bathing cultures as well as the development of the postmodern aesthetic. “Undesigning the Bath” (1996) is Koren’s manifesto for a bathing culture that trawls widely from the mud bath to the hammam, from Japanese bathing rituals to the Apache Indian sweat lodge, to consider what makes a superior bath.

“Soak, Steam, Dream” is designed by London-based studio Kellenberger-White, using a materials-focused approach to transform the fluid spaces of the Zaha Hadid-designed gallery into an animistic bathing grotto, drawing on natural and ad hoc materials including clay, wood and charcoal.

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Germán del Sol, Termas Geométricas, Chile

Kengo Kuma, Kogohi Bathhouse, Japan

Raumlabor, Göteborg sauna, inside, Sweden

Raumlabor, Göteborg sauna, Sweden

Left: Shigeru Ban, Onagawa Station and Public Bath, Miyagi, Japan. Photo Hiroyuki Hirai. Right: Peter Zumthor, Therme Vals, Grabunden, Switzerland. Photo Fernando Guerra. Courtesy of View Pictures

until 28 January 2017
Soak, Steam, Dream
Roca London Gallery
Station Court, Townmead Road, London

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Soak Steam Dream

The exhibition curated by Jane Withers at the Roca London Gallery explores a new bathhouse culture through the work of contemporary architects and designers.

Technology and design for innovative washrooms

Eclisse: when invisibility art shakes up interior design

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