Therapeutic Serenity

Designing a place to Bathe was actually fun but kind of challenging for me. Having experience with being in a wheel chair from a Traumatic experience I needed to think what it would be like to have been in that wheel chair for the rest of my life. The feeling is quite different. I decided I would go with what I know and how I felt. Therefore my space is for any disabled person but I tried to focus on someone who just ended up in a wheel chair from a traumatic experience. My space is inspired by the Japanese culture. I like the idea of adding different minerals to the water for different healing purposes. Having arthritis myself I really enjoyed the idea of not feeling pain for a couple hours. This is where I got my concept of Therapeutic Serenity. Therapeutic Serenity is the art of restoring health with a calm, peaceful atmosphere. My space is very open with one wall complete with windows and the roof has two major skylights. I chose Bermuda as the ideal location of my spa. I wanted a place with lots of beautiful vegetation and a clear blue ocean. My vision is that when sitting in the bathing space one would look out onto a garden with beautiful plants and flowers onto the ocean. Below is the plot of land i'm going to buy to put this spa on.

View that clients would see when sitting in the bath tub.

Floor plan of the space. Client would enter and go into the changing rooms. There theyw ould have an area to take off and store there clothes and bathe themselves with a sponge bath. The Japanese believe that if you wash yourself of all earthly and dirty things than the water in the tub will stay clean and pure. This is also necessary when bathing with more than one person. After changing clothes and bathing they would access the ramp that acts as a bridge over the hot springs to take them to the tubs. The platform that holds the tubs is 1'6" from the ground floor, and the hot spring goes down 1'6" from the ground floor.

Example of how alternate floor in tub would work. Essentially four notches would hook into the bath tub. When at top of tub it would snap tight for the person in the wheel chair to scoot onto. From there it would work much like an automatic seat in a car. The alternate floor would lower the person into the bath and back out.



Detail Tile placement of concrete and river stone, including the tile placement of river stone in hot spring.
Elevation of south wall facing ocean. Bamboo dividers are placed in between glass planes.
Elevation of north wall that is the entrances to the changing rooms
section view of changing/bathing rooms. Includes counter with sink and storage area.
Ceiling plans. Vaulted from corner of every wall to center of roof. Glass sections from north and south walls.
FFE Schedule.
View of bathing space from in front of changing rooms. Ramp is 15' long and goes to platform that is 1'6" high. Below that another 1' 6" is the bottom of the hot spring. On the platform are four bathtubs. There are bamboo dividers that may be open or closed depending on whether the client would like to bath privatly or publicly. View out of windows is over a garden and ocean.
View of bathtubs from platform. This is a good view of the bamboo dividers that may be pushed outside to bathe publicly or pulled inside to bathe privately.
view of the changing rooms. Left wall's bottom half is the paneled bamboo divided by Free Form. Section to bathe yourself and storage to put clothes in.
Sketch model of bathing area.