In a rather unexpected venture, Finnish studio JKMM Architects and the Sauna on Fire collective designed and built a sauna in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for the 2019 Burning Man festival. Steam of Life Pavilion is a circular timber sauna, minimalistic in its design, but the impact was undoubtedly felt during the festival, which saw the pavilion visited by over 1000 attendees.
Created in response to the festival’s theme, Metamorphosis, Steam of Life was meant to “provide a place for attendees of the annual event in the Nevada desert to rest and relax,” the architects said in a statement to Dezeen. A hot sauna may seem unusual or even counterintuitive in such a warm climate, but the rituals of the typical Finnish sauna focus more on the detoxing benefits, which the two teams managed to emulate through the construction.
“We felt that a desert sauna responds well to this year’s theme of metamorphosis,” JKMM’s Samppa Lappalainen says. “Saunas are about cleansing and regeneration — both physical and spiritual. We also thought bringing a sauna into the desert was so mad that we had to do it.”
To experience the sauna, attendees enter into a dimly lit passageway that leads to the löylyhuone (“steam room” in English), a curved space that features wooden benches along the walls and surrounding the central stove. After their cleansing sauna experience, guests continue to another low-lit space that opens into an atrium in the center, which is used for cooldown and meditation.
The team used timber slabs, stacked atop one another in a minimal design that allowed light to stream in naturally while also providing shade from the Nevada desert. Two different sizes of plywood formed the ceilings, interior walls and sauna seating. The overall construction was complete with little more than the two materials, which were all locally sourced apart from the sauna itself, which had been transported from Finland.
“Saunas are great examples of timber construction,” Lappalainen says. “The Steam of Life pavilion shows how wood can be used in versatile and imaginative ways. We wanted to share the sauna both as a building type and actual experience with fellow Burners, because it is so deeply representative of Finnish identity and culture.”
Despite being a temporary installation for the week-long festival, Steam of Life certainly left a Finnish impact on all who partook, proving that a little extra sweat in the desert can have undeniable healing powers.
