A Tiny Forest Sauna Makes Room for Rest Without Major Excavation - Yanko Design
Sauna Zaježová, a roughly 269-square-foot timber building by Guča arch. at an educational center in Pliešovce, Slovakia, replaces an earlier sauna that wasn't comfortable enough. It gives changing, heating, resting, and cooling their own spaces: a central vestibule, a compact sauna room downhill, a larger glazed rest room uphill facing the forest, and a terrace with a cooling tub. The piece praises the design-build approach and the exposed larch frames, whose rhythm echoes stacked drying timber. It also praises the raised footing that avoids regrading the slope and the generous space given to post-sauna rest. It argues the project is no backyard template, since it's shaped by its site, and that the transferable lesson is to plan how people move through a place before worrying about the exterior. The old sauna is slated to become firewood storage.