baths at saint jorgen's lake
Fall 2014
After visiting an existing public bathhouse in Copenhagen, and immersing in the experience of sauna culture, I noticed the range between social and solitary mindsets and intents of bathers. With this project calling for a new bath complex reaching into the southernmost of Copenhagen’s five urban “lakes” from the eastern bank, I decided that a bathhouse must provide for both the social and the solitary user. This building intends to separate and reveal, using different layers of openness organized around layers of wall. Space is created by cutting openings into and across the walls. The walls are 1.5 meters wide, and this thickness is used as threshold for compression and decompression. But the depth of the wall also provides a space to occupy, as a place to sit, shower, store personal belongings, or space to stand in to have a private conversation. The program of the baths is distributed with private spaces, like the salt bath and sauna, located in the darker, less open southern end with more public areas like the warm basin and whirlpool towards the north. As one moves from one end to the other, and between the depths of the walls, the amount of light and height of wall openings signify the gradual progression on the spectrum of social and solitary space.
The walls are built of masonry consisting of long, monochrome bricks, which are wrapped around a precast concrete slab structure with a hollow space in the center to carry the building systems. However, underneath the wall openings the gap is spanned by wood, rather than wrapping the brick underneath so that it appeared to hang. The space between the walls is used for letting in natural light, either through a full glass ceiling, or smaller panes that cast light along the walls. The glass panels are tilted slightly to allow for rainwater to flow into small gaps in the masonry wall and collect into pipes which then run through the center of the walls. Intensive green roof structures also run between the walls, and slope down toward the entrance courtyard to make the bath complex appear less like a building and more like a series of planes in the landscape. The result is a bathhouse that appears stark and monumental on both the inside and outside.