Long before LED therapy and 24-karat-gold facials, wellness often focused on rituals of water and heat in hot springs and sweat lodges. Buddhist monks popularized the concept of soaking in hot water in Japan when they arrived there in the sixth century. The word spa itself is an acronym for the Latin term “sanus per aqua,” which translates to “health through water.” The ancient Mayans and Aztecs would perform both healing and cleansing ceremonies in the steam of a temazcal, often a dome-roofed structure made of stone or mud brick. And as much as these customs were about individual well-being, they were also about social health—providing spaces for connecting as a community.
Thermal baths, saunas, soaks, and hammams are still part of daily life around the globe. These practices—and the architecture around them—are being not only modernized but in some cases supersized and reimagined in unexpected locations. The white-marble hammam at Royal Mansour Spa in Marrakech, Morocco, is one of the most spectacular, more traditional examples, and the spa’s ornate lobby features lacelike Moorish musharabieh panels. The Sky Lagoon geothermal spa just outside Reykjavik, Iceland, is a smaller, more intimate alternative to the touristy Blue Lagoon.
In New York, the recently renovated Gurney’s Montauk Resort in the Hamptons includes the 30,000-square-foot Seawater Spa, while deep in Brooklyn, the new 50,000-square-foot World Spa complex offers a range of cultural experiences, including Eastern European banyas, Finnish saunas, Japanese onsen, Turkish and Moroccan hammams, and Himalayan salt therapy.
Both locals and visitors to Oslo are flocking to the newly reopened Vestkantbadet, one of Norway’s last remaining public baths, which has recently been pristinely restored to its former art-deco glory. Located within the luxurious Sommerro hotel, the complex features a historic indoor pool with opulent mosaics as well as the original Roman bath, which has been converted into a space for a cold-plunge pool and an infrared sauna.
In Japan, there is no end of onsen ryokan, traditional inns surrounding the country’s ample hot springs, but when Kengo Kuma designs one, as he has done on the island of Kyushu, the legendary architect takes the tradition to a modern art form. Kuma’s latest onsen project, KAI Yufuin, owned by the prestigious Hoshino Resorts, sports minimalist bungalows and steaming pools set among terraced rice fields in rural Yufuin, with dramatic views of Mount Yufu.
And at Habitas’s new property in the countryside surrounding San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, the Habitas Social Club embraces the site’s natural hot springs and offers temazcal sweat-lodge ceremonies to encourage connection among guests.
