Baths experiment in the post-pandemic era

During the epidemic, a report in a newspaper in Xi’an asking “why the Tumen community bathhouse is closed” attracted our attention. Even though the epidemic casts a shadow on public communication, people are always eager to have real face-to-face contact with others.

After the epidemic, when people get back together, how should they find the actual value of public intercourse space again? We tried to focus on the “new” public space of the city in the post-epidemic era, and found that the former community park has been transformed into a temporary nucleic acid test site, integrated into the daily life of residents.

Inspired by this report, starting from solving a small practical problem, it settled in the public intercourse space that people neglected but indispensable—the bathing place. An underground bathhouse is embedded on the basis of retaining the original space above. The entrance is like a rabbit hole, suggesting another world and inviting people; in the enclosed large space, returning to the original undifferentiated cave state of the building, amplifying the perception of natural light and the elapse of time, combining the daily bathing with the undefended social experience. Here, public and private, scattered and gathered, simple and complex, hidden in urban space, in the most basic spatial form.

The epidemic has circled people, and the world has completed a subversion. Lost space is bound, exposed and open, while free space is safe, private and hidden. The sunlight on the ground fills the gap between each other, emphasizes people’s psychological alienation, and a new lost space is born. The light diffused into the underground baths is a coat full of security. people’s emotions are naturally exposed along with washing the body.

Relying on the nucleic acid test sites all over the city, planting a seed with this baths experiment, the urban public intercourse spaces have gradually recovered, and people will regain the comfort and peace they lack in real life.