Immersion in water, steam, and light

Abstract

The built environment impacts and impresses itself upon the body and spirit. Our senses reveal and interpret these experiences. I am interested in the experiencing of architecture at a point where the material and permanent collide and cooperate with the immaterial and impermanent. Through the design and transformation of a Russian bath in an urban American context this thesis investigates how the elements of building react to and shape the natural elements. Haw together they are assembled and manipulated into an architecture of form and texture, light and dark, scale and rhythm, and sound and silence; thus recreating and reinforcing the body, its senses and rituals, within our environment.