Challenge
A client tempted by luxury hospitality, a community that refused a ticketed spa, and a hot spring well that already served tomato growers.
2025 · Bath · Civic
Thermal Commons
Hot spring baths as civic infrastructure
- Year
- 2025
- Location
- Bath, England
- Type
- Civic
- Status
- On site
- Area
- 2,400 sq m
- Client
- North Baths Collective
Bathing here is not leisure. It is how a town of 2,500 people gathers in winter darkness. The architecture borrows the logic of a covered market: long, cheap, and impossible to privatize.
A sequence of hot and cold rooms arranged as a public street, not a spa, on the edge of a greenhouse town.
Approach
We split the well. Growers keep first rights. The baths take overflow at 38 to 42 C. Concrete vaults are cast with local stone. Changing rooms face the street so the building never hides its public life.
Outcome
Structure complete. First fill scheduled October 2026. Town assembly voted 71% to keep entry by donation.
Credits
Lead
Sarah Hall
Spring survey
National Water Survey
Civic brief
Bath Town Council
Next project
Tide Market Hall