Public · 2022
Tidepool Bathhouse
A public bathhouse on the coast where the programme is as much about shelter from the wind as it is about water.
- Location
- Olympic Peninsula, WA
- Year
- 2022
- Area
- 1,150 m²
- Status
- Built
- Scope
- New build · public bathing pavilion
The peninsula gets a hundred days of sun a year and a thousand reasons to stay inside. The bathhouse is the opposite argument — a low, heavy building set into the dune, open to the sea on one side and warm on the other.
Pools step down toward the shore: hot, warm, cold, and finally the sound itself. The building is concrete and cedar, with a roof shaped to shed the wind rather than fight it. On storm days the steam rises off the hot pool and the room glows.
Entry is by donation, and the design keeps running costs within reach of a volunteer trust — no mechanical cooling, wood heat from local mill waste, and water heated by the same sun the building is designed to hold.
In progress / on site
Field notes.
