Frihamnen Harbor is located close to the city center and will include the Jubilee Park and other facilities during the planned renovation. While this territory is awaiting renewal, however, residents of Gothenburg are already using it: roller skaters, lovers of aircraft modeling, members of the gardening group, film screenings are held here, novice car owners and motorcyclists are training, the townspeople just walk and run - with or without dogs.
The architects decided to complement this set of "spontaneous" functions with another one, anticipating the official use of the harbor as a swimming place, when the water and soil here will be cleared. raumlabor_berlin has set up a bath complex here, responding to the environment of endless asphalted areas, docks, cranes and passing fishing boats.
The central object is a sauna, outside sheathed with metal that used to be a ship's equipment. Inside it is covered with a "shingle" made of thick plywood made of larch. But this "shingle" is still thin enough to react to changes in temperature in the interior, which is what the authors of the project wanted. If the metal shell of the sauna is cold and brutal, then the interior "envelops" the person, directing his gaze to the main window overlooking the harbor cranes and the center of Gothenburg.
The complex also includes a changing room with a used wine bottle shower, wooden piers and a pool on the water. The parts of the complex are connected with each other by wooden "bridges", and a small square paved with granite blocks has been arranged: they were allocated by the city administration of parks.
The “bathing” function was chosen not only because of the proximity of water: it is also an attempt to return to the role of the public bath as a forum, a place for meetings and discussions, as it was in antiquity and later, but not in modern times, when it was replaced faceless pools and spas. The architects of raumlabor_berlin see joint bathing as a rare activity for a modern person, in which there is no competition, consumption or spectacle. The democratic nature of the project emphasizes the participation in its implementation, along with professional builders, of all comers.
