Sauna building as collective study
Stichting Kunsteiland, Rotterdam, 2019
with Groep Soep self-organized study group,
Explore Lab, TU Delft
supported by Het Nieuwe Instituut, Jongeneel, Harvia, Spax


Over the month of July 2019, a group of students, a researcher - friends - built a sauna together in a green haven surrounded by the industrial port of Rotterdam. A self-formed study group within our graduation year, we spent time experimenting our practices, organizing reading groups, making projects and giving 'studio feedback' with each other. We extended and combined our practices towards building a sauna; a space for intimacy and openness through sweat. We sourced re-used materials, sponsorship, critical thoughts and nourishment; to build without drawings; inhabiting a process of improvisation, and encounter.

The former quarantine area of the port of Rotterdam was abandoned in the 1950s and squatted from the 1980s onwards by a variety of different groups, including those who have formed the Stichting Kunsteiland. The area was registered on the national monuments list which has protected it from development, and thus has become an isolated green haven, with a public beach, in the midst of the very commercial port of Rotterdam.

The sauna will remain for five years, to be used by local residents, before major municipal redevelopment of the area commences.