Round About Baths

Installed at Plaza Salón in central Logroño, Round About Baths occupies an urban roundabout and reactivates its unused fountain. The project includes steam rooms, changing areas, and outdoor cold basins. Using local timber and reused urban materials, it offers privacy and collective experience. Temporarily interrupting the traffic flow, the structure invites reflection on public space, wellness, and urban access.

Urban roundabouts are often lifeless voids, inaccessible and dominated by traffic. In Logroño, a city with few public bathing spaces, Round About Baths reclaims one such roundabout, transforming its forgotten fountain into a site for collective care. The strategy responds to the lack of accessible wellness infrastructure and the erosion of public space by proposing a temporary but highly symbolic intervention. The design offers a complete bathing ritual—steam, cold water, rest—while ensuring privacy and inclusion. The project invites undressed bodies into the urban core, shifting the focus from cars to people and from movement to presence.

The structure consists of a regular pine timber frame (from Rioja, Spain) clad with rough, uncut pine panels painted with water-based grey paint. The chimney is 13.5m tall and houses the fire-heated steam room. Outdoor cold basins surround the building. Urban planters were reused as cast-iron fire pits, and signage was carved from local granite. All materials are low-impact, locally sourced and either reused or repurposable after dismantling. The temporary installation minimizes costs and waste. Maintenance is simple: panels are untreated and weather-resistant; fire equipment requires supervision. The project was built by local carpenters and designed for full disassembly and reuse, embodying circular construction principles.