Bath time: returning to the city that helped launch his career in the mid-1970s, Nicholas Grimshaw re-contextualizes his machine aesthetic in the heart of Georgian Bath - Cover Story

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2003 by Rob Gregory

To the pump-room we went, where the grave and the gay And the aged, and
the sickly, lounge time away; Where all the choice spirits are seen
making free With the sov'reign cordial, the true 'eau de vie'.--The
English Spy, 1825

A spa is a machine for bathing in. And this is not solely a modernist's view. Even in ancient times, spas were highly technical buildings with practical and ritual traditions. With water at the heart of their culture, the Romans led the way, either by going to where the water was, or by building spectacular devices to divert it.

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In cities such as Bath, Roman engineering remains an inspiration. As part of this legacy of technical innovation, which began in Bath in AD43, an appropriately visionary decision was made in 1997 to appoint a contemporary architect to design a new city spa--and Nicholas Grimshaw was chosen. For over 35 years, Grimshaw's practice has pursued functionalist and expressionist ideals, most recently demonstrated at Eden (AR August 2001). But, with this reputation and the potential for Grimshaw to design a new attraction with the draw of the city's iconic square, circus, and crescent, many questioned the propriety of procuring a Grimshaw building for Bath. Living there at the time, in the heart of a precious World Heritage City, I recall a common question on people's lips was, 'Grimshaw? City fringe machine, perhaps. But can he do context?'

This was new territory for Grimshaw, and the stakes were high. The previously derelict spa, which lay dormant for over 25 years, comprised four listed buildings, all of which needed full restoration. So, in collaboration with conservation experts from Donald Insall Associates (1), new functions were carefully inserted. These included reception, catering, and administrative spaces within Thomas Baldwin's 7/7A and 8 Bath Street; a wet treatment suite in Wood the Younger's 1775 Hot Bath; and the full restoration of Baldwin's 1790 Cross Bath--arguably the most sacred of the city's ancient monuments. Then, on the site of the former 1927 Beau Street Pool, Grimshaw designed a new five-storey leisure complex which, as the fulcrum between the existing buildings, would resolve the conflicting floor levels and rationalize circulation to provide a fully accessible public building.

Grimshaw's formal response was simple. On axis with, and in response to the formal geometry of the Hot Bath, a three-storey stone cube has been raised above the basement plant room and lower ground floor pool on huge concrete mushroom columns. Then, in a manner reminiscent of Foster's Willis Faber Dumas Building (AR September 1975), residual space between cube and plot boundary has been enclosed by a smooth glass curtain-wall, making space for a cylindrical stair tower at the corner of the site, and producing delightful daytime reflections of the neighbouring Georgian streetscapes.

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In a city where the use of stone is a prerequisite for any new building, to convince the planners of his ambitions to use glass, Grimshaw did not have to look far to find his precedent. By simply pointing to the south transept of the city's famous Abbey, which was clearly visible from the planning office's meeting room, he identified the city's first glazed building with its prototypical curtain-wall.

Like Grimshaw's industrial buildings, the spa has a strict operational brief--to process bathers with leisurely efficiency. On entering the building, each visitor is issued with an electronic wristband that operates lockers, records facilities used and even monitors how many Bath buns you consume in the first-floor cafe. Visitors then pass immediately through a suite of glazed changing cubicles that act as wet/dry transition locks, transforming them from dressed citizen to undressed bathers. From here you can either descend into the sinuous subterranean pool and wet treatment suite, or rise sequentially through the building to dry treatment rooms, steam rooms, and spectacular rooftop pool.

The naturally hot spring water that fills the pools, and also pre-heats supplementary hot water requirements within the building, is a blend taken from three springs--the Hetling Spring, Cross Bath Spring and Kings Spring. Bore holes take water from the base of each source, the water is then processed in the basement plant room, a dramatic hidden engine room that breathes through the building's snorkel-like cylindrical stair tower. An ozone pre-treatment process kills bugs, followed by filtration and ultraviolet processes before water is pumped into the building's three pools. Once they are full, which takes 50 hours, the water is then continually re-blended, with a two-day water change rate ensuring the pools, including the exposed rooftop pool, maintain a minimum temperature of 33.5[degrees]C from the 44[degrees]C water source.

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Throughout the building the structure and the spaces are beautifully integrated, with internal pool, steam rooms, treatment rooms and even the rooftop pool responding to the columns' dominant form. Materially, a fine balance is struck between luxury and practicality and, where new meets old, good interventionist manners apply, with the junction between the two articulated in plan and section by glass. From Grimshaw's first sketches, the concept has remained clear. But, as with all concepts, there are inevitable compromises. Internally, the dry treatment suite with its carpet and timber floor is rather out of place at the heart of the wet cube. The solitary column in the reception area which, as a key architectural incident is neither subtle nor celebrated, could have been more distinguished when seen against Baldwin's sweeping colonnade and Cross Bath. More significantly however, the external legibility of Grimshaw's cube has been slightly lost as a result of the planners' insistence that the adjoining service core should be clad with Bath stone. While easily discernible in plan, the shift from stack bond to traditionally bonded ashlar is too subtle to distinguish the two forms from the street, and alternatives such as render and lead were simply not permitted.