John Sebastian Vitale

• I is Something (Free Band T-shirts)
• Hey World, Check Me Out
• “.......” #2
• Is This Thing On?
• Bathhouse
• On it (American Voodoo Wish Machine)
• “.......” #1
• Collage

• CV
• Contact

Bathhouse
Proposal Brief, 17 August 2006

To drastically improve the state of affairs in Manhattan we designed a sliding admissions scale, sustainable bathhouse for the corner of Elizabeth and Broome, located in a downtown gray area surrounded by Little Italy, Chinatown, and Nolita. ¶Designed to focus attention to oneself inside community, the walls are one way mirrored construction glass interspersed with translucent concrete columns. From outside the ground level the bathhouse is camouflaged, reflecting the city around it while the translucent columns provide silhouettes of the movement inside. The ground level is soundproof so the city can be watched in silence after emerging from the baths downstairs. ¶The bath level is compromised of Russian, Turkish, Finnish, and steam rooms surrounding a centrally located ice bath. Between these rooms one can find the right ratio of humidity and heat to suit one’s taste. ¶The building is also designed to dramatically reduce water waste through solid carbon filtration of almost all water run off, distillation collected from excess steam, and an inwardly sloped roof to collect rain. Water will constantly be filtered and recycled through the building for the ice bath, kitchen use, and flora on the ground level. The majority of the light for the building comes from a 18x24 foot skylight above the main stairwell illuminating the common area and baths below during daylight hours. ¶Many comparisons and metaphors about the construction and purpose of the building can be drawn: building sustainability in relation to personal maintenance, the play between attention to self while participating in a community, the quasi religious connotations of the bath’s structure and secular meditative activity, and even, if you like, the idea of New York as a “melting pot”. But ultimately this bathhouse provides a semi-intimate social interaction that is lacking from many daily events in New York. By bringing everything down to a basic level the trivial, both personal and societal, become apparent and blatantly unimportant. While watching solipsistic tendencies pass by from inside this atypical environment, a valuable new perspective is provided, one that many will eventually employ on the streets outside.

—John S. Vitale and Noah Sherburn | Download Plans (PDF)