Inhale, Exhale, Sag, Flex

We come to the few remaining bathhouses for utility and delight. But the bathhouse is remembered for something else: a place where we care for ourselves among strangers, privately and collectively at once. Like us, the bathhouse's architecture is continuously sanitized and maintained.

Inhale, Exhale, Sag, Flex is a proposal for temporary, easily fabricated bathhouses on city-owned lots in Los Angeles. It's two buildings, a steam house and a pool house, separated by a stair. Flex, the steam house, is enclosed by an expanding quilt of water bladders that fill as steam evaporates and bodies exhale. Sag, the pool house, stands on a frame wrapped in building paper, which is removed and dried each time it goes soggy from pool splash and shower steam.

Both buildings contain interior landscapes of building paper, a folded aluminum structural system, some exposed conduit, and plenty of water plunges. Shuffling through, we can view each other as we steam up and soak the paper. The bathhouse unrobes and sags as often as we do. And then it's made ready again and again.