Urban Bathing

As a lifelong aficionado of public bathing, I have closely watched its rising popularity. I believe Wim Hof is the culprit. For years, I asked Melburnians where one could go to a sauna – a naked sauna – and Melburnians looked back at me like I was very, very strange. Then, one day in 2016, I went to my GP for symptoms of fatigue, and she said, out of the blue: “You should try the Wim Hof method. I do it every day.”

Truth be told, the Dutchman Hof's wellness technique, which aims to reduce stress and inflammation in the body, is based on deep breathing – but cold therapy is an essential part. Cold showers may do, Hof said. But plenty of photos of Wim chilling in ice barrels suggested otherwise.

Roughly around the same time, Tasmania's MONA¹ started organising the Dark Mofo Nude Solstice Swim as part of its winter music and arts festival. Friends which, not long ago, had called me a funny European for seeking out naked swims, all signed up for MONA-sponsored skinny-dipping in the chilly ocean. The tide had shifted.

It was the health benefits that finally convinced my puritan countrymen and women to bathe together. Plunging into cold water causes a spike in adrenaline and anti-inflammatory chemicals in the body, so it reduces inflammation and is known to increase one's pain threshold. It also seems to improve one's overall fitness.

Having long battled poor circulation, I've never needed science to convince me. The instant high, the bolt of energy as it sends blood running into my extremities, followed by a deep feeling of calm that lasts for the rest of the day – it’s one of life's small pleasures; cheaper, healthier and more environmentally friendly than any drug.

I've come to think of the alternative immersion into hot and cold water as a kind of universal delight, shared between all human cultures, at least since the opulent Roman baths. Today, there are myriad forms of public bathing in the world, and they all, in different forms, offer the joys of being in turn warm, cold and relaxed. I've attempted to try as many as possible.

The sex-segregated steam hammams of Turkey, still present in every Istanbul neighbourhood, where a stranger will vigorously scrub you all over with a sharp loofah until your soul separates from the marble slab on which your body is lying, and floats away into the lightwell in the tiled, domed ceiling. The Japanese neighbourhood baths, sentō, in which you do your own scrubbing, before you're allowed into the pristinely clear, steaming hot water of the communal bathtub.

When the first sentō in Australia, Ofuroya, opened in Melbourne's Collingwood in 1998 – even though the concept was so foreign to Australia that a large sign on the door had to specify that “this is not a brothel” – a veritable community soon grew around it. Fans included many architects whose offices dotted the area, who would often join me for an after-work soak.

Then there is the much more rambunctious Korean co-ed spa model, meant as a social occasion for the whole family. The Wi Spa in Los Angeles is a Koreatown institution: a 24/7 bathing extravaganza on four floors of hot and cold baths, jacuzzis, saunas and massage rooms – but also a whole floor of restaurants, a manga library and a rooftop terrace. One Christmas, friends and I spent a whole day there, sharing dumplings, beers and jacuzzi. As the lights went dim at 4am, and we dozed off on the rooftop, warm under a pile of blankets, I decided that Wi Spa must be Los Angeles's answer to Berghain².

In Berlin, spa culture is indeed the perfect companion to its club culture: hip, utopian, co-ed, and mostly stark naked. My memorable first experience was at Badeschiff, the floating sauna and pool³ on Berlin's main river Spree. “You cannot wear any clothes,” the door lady sternly told me and my friend Anique. She handed us bathrobes and two pairs of thongs. “You change in the outbuilding, then walk to the float.” It was mid-winter.

“Madam, it's –15 Celsius outside,” I protested. She shrugged.

Naked underneath our robes, we ran through ankle-deep snow through the courtyard, across the bridge to the domed raft. We were greeted with a scene of classic Berlin hedonism: beautiful people, naked and toned like Olympic athletes, reading newspapers or drinking coffee between sauna sessions or dips in the outdoor pool. A specialty of the German sauna is 'Aufguss', an hourly ritual in which the saunamaster whips up hot air with a swinging towel. It feels like being hit by electric bolts of intense heat, and is not for the faint-hearted: the appropriate behaviour is to dash out after a few minutes and plunge into cold water. Afterwards, I vividly remember standing on the outside deck, high on endorphins, and listening to the sound of snowflakes falling on the river – all while shuffling my feet, because my wet thongs were literally freezing to the ground!

Badeschiff was built in 2004 as an urban art project. In retrospect, it presaged two major urban trends. The first was the evolution of humble neighbourhood baths into elaborate wellness centres that married health, gastronomy, and entertainment. Berlin soon followed with Liquidrom, which featured Aufguss with honey and salt body rubs, an extra-buoyant saltwater pool, and live DJ sets pumped through underwater speakers. Thanks to a genius ticketing policy, which gave everyone free entry on their birthday, Liquidrom quickly became a favourite birthday pre-party venue. Its influence could even be seen in the expansion of clubs like Bar25, which grew to offer spa, massage and haute cuisine.

Similar projects have since sprouted throughout northern Europe, putting a youthful, contemporary twist on sauna culture. A number of start-ups in Copenhagen have enlivened the harbour area with products ranging from sauna huts, floating saunas, outdoor hot tubs, all the way to a floating jacuzzi, which is essentially a motorised hot tub sailing through the harbour waters, carrying a group of friends and their Champagne – a truly insane sight (or magnificent, depending on your viewpoint).

Unlike the German sauna, which is an open social environment, Scandinavian saunas are small spaces, to be enjoyed with the closest friends only. So HotTub in Copenhagen became our refuge during the pandemic winters, when only outdoor socialising in small groups was allowed. This was also where I discovered the Scandinavian practice of winter bathing. Until that point, entering ice-covered open sea waters was a step too far for me. But, emboldened by watching friends jump into the harbour, I got out of our steamy tub and slowly lowered myself into the coldest water I had ever thought my body would touch. After the initial shock, the rush of endorphins was simply extraordinary. It couldn't compare to a cold shower: it was an instant high.

But the second major urban trend has been the movement, made possible by deindustrialisation, to make urban waters once again good for swimming. Here again Europe has led the way. Swiss cities started restoring their rivers in the 1980s, and by 2010, on my visit to Zurich, my academic colleagues thought nothing of undressing in our conference break and jumping into the river Limmat for a dip – right in the city centre! There are now over 40 ‘Badis’, or public baths, in Zurich, all elegantly designed and offering a variety of experiences: women-only, men-only, and in the evening many turn into bars with live music.

More excitingly, in Basel, it has become a custom for commuters to travel back home by jumping into the Rhine river – their clothes packed in a special watertight bag called Wickelfisch – and letting the river carry them downstream. Staircases at regular intervals facilitate an exit.

Important community spaces where we connect to our environment. A similar sentiment was expressed in Australia's entry to the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, which turned the closed pavilion into a public pool. Whereas northern Europe has had to discover open baths, in Australia swimming spaces have long been public, open, democratic. Writer Anna Funder described them as community infrastructure akin to a public library. Christos Tsiolkas has written passionately that they represent a democratic, multicultural society that he “would love to keep defending”. Fittingly, the pavilion itself became a refuge during the hot Venice summer. Visitors enjoyed a respite from the cerebral hauteur of the Biennale by taking their shoes off and chilling in cold water.

The movement has gathered pace since the Paris Olympics, with the formation of the Swimmable Cities group in August 2024. It's a global alliance advocating for everyone's right to access safe, healthy and swimmable waterways, offering an array of free online tools for cities, designers and funders. Swimmable Cities is convened by Melbourne-based Matt Sykes, with Chris Romer-Lee in the steering group. Romer-Lee, whose design for a floating, naturally-filtering Thames Baths kickstarted the reintroduction of swimming in the Thames, has also worked with Yarra Pools towards making Melbourne's Birrarung river once again safe for swimming. Meanwhile, community groups, such as the Yarra Yabbies, are reintroducing community swimming in the upper reaches of the river.

Copenhagen, likewise, has rehabilitated its entire harbour area, creating a whole new design language of urban swimming: from the semi-industrial plunge points of Refshaleøen, via the landscaped harbour baths of Islands Brygge and Sluseholmen, to the floating bathhouses in the suburban Amager – such as the lovely, curling Sneglen (Snail) by White Arkitekter. Mads Birgens, Head of Urbanism at COBE, one of the key architecture studios involved in the harbour redesign, describes the new culture of urban swimming as an ‘inspiring and exciting’ success. “The entire harbour has become one huge space for the city to gather around, and a fantastic destination for both citizens and tourists,” he tells me. “It is the heart of contemporary Copenhagen, and that quality of life by the sea has become a special feature of the city.”

I can attest to that, having lived directly on the Copenhagen harbour. Lunch-break swims with colleagues, after-work beers with housemates on the pier right at our doorstep, and starting the weekend with a harbour swim – it was a blessed life. Our building's garage had both bike and kayak parking. Even the yoga studio downstairs offered special paddleboard yoga.

There is something inherently democratic in urban swimming, which is open, affordable and accessible to all. In his book Sea Pools, architect Chris Romer-Lee calls them “liquid piazzas”.

Researcher Loretta Bellato from Swinburne University's Centre for Urban Transitions (who also occasionally swims with the Yabbies) says that regenerating urban waterways requires a paradigm shift. “It basically requires whole system changes, not just tinkering with parts that maintain the status quo. We're looking at the whole ecological system, cultural revitalisation, economic development, and changing the community’s relationship towards reciprocity with the river.”

Where urban bathing is established, the culture is indeed very different. In my second year in Copenhagen, I started a proper winter bathing routine: continuing my daily swims as summer gave way to autumn and gradually building up tolerance. I was pregnant at the time, but my Danish midwife was supremely unconcerned. “You would need to lower your core temperature suddenly and dramatically for the baby to be affected through the amniotic fluid,” she said calmly and sent me off on my way. “Keep doing what feels right to you.” I did, exchanging winter bathing for indoor pools as winter approached and the harbour got invaded by jellyfish. The night before my child was born, I was in Liquidrom, blissing out in the saltwater pool, completely buoyant despite my (gigantic) size. Nobody batted an eyelid.

Historically, neighbourhood baths developed as a complement to small apartment living. As we are returning to compact homes, their importance is growing again. I can think of a few beautiful, well-known affordable housing developments that have incorporated public pools, baths or saunas into their designs, including the Nightingale Skye House in Melbourne and Allt-Erlaa in Vienna.

But public baths, be they outdoor or indoor, are more than just a bathtub for those who don’t have it at home, or a beach for those without a beach house. They are civic spaces that promote health, sport, wellbeing and liveability. They connect us to our planet and to each other. Like good public transport, they are a marker of a democratic, equitable society that ensures a good life for all.

Certainly, changing the culture is no small feat. From growing our acceptance of nudity, to reducing our cultural aversion to risk, to changing the planning regulations and assumptions around appropriate activity in and around water⁴. It is also no small task to rehabilitate the waterways of large industrial cities such as London or New York, where swimming is often forbidden by law due to pollution. And yet, Paris worked hard to make the Seine swimmable for the Olympics, and this year New York has, after a campaign that started in 2010, finally begun trialling a design for the floating Plus Pool in Lower Manhattan.

Tireless advocate for urban bathing, Chris Romer-Lee cites Swiss cities as his inspiration: “This is what we're all fighting for. We'll get there.”

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¹ The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere conceived and owned by professional gambler and Tassie native, David Walsh. Noted for its central themes of sex and death and described by Walsh as “a subversive adult Disneyland”, MONA and its associated music and arts festivals have had a transformative impact on the economy and cultural influence of Australia’s smallest and least populous state.

² Sometimes called ‘the best techno club in the world’ with a curious combination of dancefloor, darkroom, cuddle spaces and ice-cream parlour, Berlin’s Berghain has perfected the 48-hour party experience. In 2023, an article in the German media compared Berghain to a wellness centre: “Sweating half-naked bodies, small dark spaces, and three hours’ wait at the door: techno-temple Berghain or sauna-temple Vabali?”

³ Alas, Badeschiff hasn't operated in winter months for a few years now. It is now just a summertime floating pool.

⁴ Indeed, the beloved Ofuroya in Melbourne closed in December 2023 after 25 years. Rumour has it that the Masuoka family got tired of fighting council regulations. Apparently, the council insisted that the Masuoka family install lifts to its two tiny, sex-segregated bathing rooms.