Sauna escapes that warm up users with natural wellness

The science of saunas can be as foggy as their interiors. While physicians continue to argue about the extent of the physiological benefits and dangers of sustained exposure to high-temperature, high-humidity environments, humans have used saunas to form part of a healthy lifestyle for thousands of years.

The heat and/or humidity cause cardiovascular effects such as increased heart rate, skin blood flow, cardiac output and sweating, which itself facilitates temperature homeostasis – the body’s ability to regulate its core temperature. Meanwhile, exposing oneself to nature is also proven to reduce stress and improve wellbeing, too. These four saunas from around the world combine the physiological and psychological benefits of heat and humidity to improve their users’ health and wellness, inside and out.

Saunas and the luxury hotels they’re often found in share a common purpose, trading in rest and relaxation. Stuck within the confines of the hotel building, however, most hotel spas and saunas can feel disconnected from the world outside, even in hotels with natural locations. 

When the Olympic Spa Hotel in northern Italy added new rooms to its floorplan, they were sunken into the slope behind the original building to provide views of the forest, but served by an underground passageway. When it came to the sauna, however, the architects noa* network of architecture built a separate wooden structure ‘in an elevated position facing the treetops and accessible via an atmospheric aerial pathway,’ explain noa*. ‘The emphasis is on direct contact with nature.’

Made entirely of wood, the sauna’s materials support a natural connection, too. Typical larch is used for the exterior while the slatted spruce inside is treated with black wax. Combined with wall-to-wall windows, the dark interior only enhances the view of the forest.

Structuring rest and relaxation into one’s lifestyle, and using them to inform healthy relationships with the concept of wellness, are not activities restricted to vacations. This is why the inclusion of saunas and other spa-inspired environments inside the home has seen growth on a similar trajectory to the wellbeing movement itself. 

This domestic community in Madrid utilised its underground level as a ‘space for body wellness’ as architects Pachon-Paredes introduce. The design arranges rooms and their programmes according to levels of humidity, temperature, pressure and use, meaning users are first lowered into low-humidity areas such as a changing room and gym, before moving out to the spa and pool with sauna at the ends.

The result allowed the underground spa to be ‘totally isolated from sounds and smells and kept condensation from the rest of the domestic levels,’ explain Pachon-Paredes, yet still remain connected to nature by flooding natural light into the pool space through skylights at the patio’s edge.

Wood is the material of choice for sauna interiors due to its high insulation properties and little heat absorption – meaning it remains comfortable to the touch in heated spaces. Moreover, the use of wood alongside stones and water imbues saunas with an inherent connection to nature. In the straight cuts of the slats, the transparency of the glass and the scientific ventilation processes, however, there are unavoidable man-made elements to saunas, too.

One Tree Four Seasons is a project that utilises the natural setting of a lonely tree in the centre of a field for a variety of artistic purposes. After encircling walls around the tree by weaving together deadwood from the surrounding forest, then forming a floor, seats and insulating interior walls using hay from the field it resides in, the tree space was wrapped in plastic and transformed into a sauna.

‘The plastic holds the heat and steam on the inside while blending in with the snowy landscape on the outside,’ share architects Ulf Mejergren and Antti Laitinen, and ‘the smoke that rises creates a white moving volume in the bare tree crown.'

While saunas provide a luxurious setting for those looking to unwind, they do not always require an immense amount of budget and labour – or indeed an available basement or solitary tree. Le Sauna de Veillac was born out of a daydream thrown into conversation over a family dinner, and the five-metre-square structure – a lockdown project built by friends during the summer of 2020 – arose soon after.

Set tantalisingly close to the edge of a lake on a family flower farm in the south of France, the sauna’s micro-pile foundations make little permanent impact on the fragile environment, and using the traditional Japanese method of Shou Sugi Ban to preserve the wood used for its facade, the resulting ‘charred timber planks give the structure good weather resistance,’ explain architects Atelier AJO, allowing it to remain in situ for years to come.

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