6 Saunas to Battle the Winter Weather

As the Eastern seaboard slowly thaws from the ravages of Winter Storm Juno, what better opportunity to venture into architecture’s warmest buildings?

The human urge to be immersed in warmth is universal. From Scandinavia to the highlands of Central America (where it’s called a temazcal), many cultures independently invented the sauna. It’s a remarkably diverse architectural typology, fostering a social or solitary experience depending on its size and context. The sauna is a testament to ability of architecture to regulate an environment: In a classic Finnish sauna, the wood remains well above dew point and therefore dry. The steam condenses on the cooler human bodies (~100°F), absorbs the body’s excess heat, and keeps us comfortable even when the air temperature is above the boiling point (the same evaporative action keeps the air around a fountain cooler in hot weather). With that in mind, these saunas are remarkably beautiful as well as technical accomplishments.

ONE+ by Add a Room

The sauna is usually a self-contained, standalone structure, which makes it ideal for prefabrication, as evidenced by this prefab Swedish sauna. Coming in a modest 160 square feet, the stained-wood structure features an outdoor shower in the rear and a patio in the front.

Hudson Valley Spa by Andre Tchelistcheff Architects

With a grand vista that overlooks the Catskill Mountains, this sauna accompanies a large manor from the 1940s. The architects intentionally gave the sauna a contemporary appearance, with a crisp rectilinear volume and horizontal lines, to contrast with the historic and agricultural architecture elsewhere on the property. The sauna was also outfitted with a multitude of rich materials: On the exterior, corten steel chimney enclosures, an ipe rain screen, and unlacquered bronze window overhangs casings; on the interior, soapstone floors in changing rooms, and cedar walls, floors, ceilings elsewhere.

A Sauna by BUREAU A

Saunas don’t need to be a complex and expensive affair. Built on the roof of a factory in Geneva, this DIY community project is no frills and functional. It looks out to a row of poplar trees and the concrete, glass, and ceramic landscape of the factory roof

Lakeside Finnish Sauna by ALA Architects

If there were to be one country most in love with the sauna, it would certainly be Finland. Every home in Finland, as well as country’s numerous summer residences and wilderness retreats, has its own sauna. This Finnish sauna’s modern style is meant to echo the modern architecture of the 1953 villa nearby. Clad with stained hardwoods, the sauna can fit eight and its interior was carefully calibrated for acoustics and temperature control. The particularly brave can take “whirls in the snow” or jump into a nearby lake in between sauna sessions.

Floating Sauna

The contrast between extreme hot and cold is essential to sauna design. Taking that idea to the extreme, this floating sauna offers rapid immersion into the ocean below or the dry warmth of the semi-transparent space above. The project was described as a gift for the community of Rosendal, located at the end of a fjord in Norway.

Sauna

This sauna also rests between a residence and a lake, affording the same high/low temperature extremes for its users. However, within its thickly insulated walls are not one but three different rooms — a living room, sauna, and WC — each with direct access to the outside.