Mark R. Bavoso

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Spafront

Public Baths
Boston, MA, USA
Competition, 2024

In the 2001 volume Harvard Guide to Shopping, Rem Koolhaas and his co-editors identify mechanical climate control as one of the primary technological drivers behind shopping’s twentieth century architectural identity of interiority. This proposal reappropriates the unseen architectural infrastructure of shopping left over in vacant storefronts: its robust HVAC equipment. The amenity of conditioned space that commercial space once provided customers can be redeployed as a public amenity in a post-shopping world, especially to benefit the unhoused, who are subject to the worst extremes of Boston’s highly variable climate.

This proposal situates a Public Bathhouse, a Laundromat, and a quarterly rotating winter warming center, summer cooling center, and a shoulder season venue/project space in the vacant shopfronts of 40-42 and 44-46 Winter Street.

Arguably, the most valuable asset of vacant commercial spaces is their existing mechanical equipment, hidden under the ubiquitous plenum of gridded acoustic ceiling tile. This proposal is premised first upon a celebration of this existing hidden mechanical capacity, upgrading its volume and adding humidifying and dehumidifying equipment to create a carefully choreographed enfilade of climate conditions, with varying temperatures and humidities. Second, the shopping floor is dropped to acommodate a second complementary plenum, within which is fitted an extensive network of radiant tubing, which serves to control the surface temperatures of walls, benches, and pools within the facility.

As one traverses from the street, where radiant tubing melts sidewalk snow in winter and mist sprinklers relieve the heat for July passers-by, through a semiconditioned ‘porch,’ where a windbreak curtain calms the draft, and through the dressing rooms, pools, showers, and saunas of the public bath, the Winter Street Public Baths presents an invigorating ritual choreography of undressing, cleaning, and body sensation delivered through both the architectural surface and the ambient conditioned air.