Pattern 144: Bathing Room

A free weekend on the 11-12 of February found me and a couple friends in Spa, Belgium. That’s not to say we went to a spa in Belgium, we went to the Spa, Belgium. Spa is a town in the Liege province of Belgium directly north of Luxembourg and is the namesake for every spa today. Since the 1400’s natural mineral springs have been attracting soothe seeking, wealthy elite to the town of Spa, sparking the establishment of the first ever casino and Thermes de Spa. Which brings me to my first pattern, number 144, bathing room.

When in Spa, there isn’t an abundance of budget-friendly activities past hiking and other forms of wandering. However, a day at Thermes de Spa is nearly compulsory and a splurge that we greatly needed. Based on the website, I was prepared for a day of meditating and uncomfortable tantric rituals. What we got was more waterpark than mud baths and cucumbers. The main pool space was a single basin with smaller looped spaces for groups and a separate pool passage that lead to a pool outside. There were some deli-style heat lamps off to one side but available spots were few and far between. Up a winding stair, through a hallway and door, across a veranda, past another two doorways, we managed to find a sauna and hammam. If you’ve never been to a hammam, I recommend you find one and give it a try. If you’re in a French speaking country, make sure it says ‘textiles’ and not ‘naturisle’. We had a close call but innocence was spared. In the end, Thermes de Spa was a poor case for the architectural potential of the bathing room pattern but a valuable example of poor modern interpretations.

Alexander starts pattern 144 by asserting: “…this pattern defines and places the main bathroom of a building. It does it by changing the present character of bathing rooms completely: And its position is so clear, and so essential, that it will probably help to form the sleeping areas and public areas given by larger patterns.”

In some ways, modern construction still takes great care in locating bathrooms. For convenience and efficiency, it is common to have bathrooms stacked above each other and adjacent to the kitchen to minimize expensive plumbing and maintenance. But Alexander takes it a step further and suggests the bathroom as the key separation between public and private space. With such a location, the ritualization of bathing gains appropriate significance for transitioning between private and public life.

Openness and privacy are also a fundamental conflict within a bathroom. Certain openness is critical to areas like the sink and toilet to welcome use from anybody while showers and baths require the option of privacy. Alexander suggests the careful placement of doors to establish open and private balance. Solid, non-lockable doors to the main sink area with secondary access to the toilet and shower so that one person cannot prevent access to anyone else. The tub is in another, more secluded space for prolonged use and spiritual reflection.

That’s more-or-less the fundamentals of bathroom arrangement. Alexander touches on much more in this pattern, suggesting that relationships to bathing and nakedness are suffering under the remains of Puritanism and the Christian Reformation which certainly holds water. Many cultures however have held onto saunas, hammams, and hot springs as a public institution. Alexander goes on to quote Nikos Kazantzakis, a Greek novelist and poet who wrote of his time in a Japanese bath in 1935;

“I feel unsurpassed happiness. I put on the kimono, wear the wooden sandals, return to my room, drink more tea, and, from the open wall, watch the pilgrims as they go up the road beating drums.… I have overcome impatience, nervousness, haste. I enjoy every single second of these simple moments I spend. Happiness, I think, is a simple everyday miracle, like water, and we are not aware of it.”

The balance between openness and privacy therefore seems to be a cultural issue, one that, if done subtly, could be influenced greatly by architecture. From a personal perspective, the balance is heavily weighted toward privacy. With enough time and attention however, social acceptance may reach the same unsurpassed happiness felt by Nikos Kazantzakis.