DESIGN


Hackney designers Somebody & Son have built a health spa using just one chiller and a single immersion heater. Alex Smith looks at the pared-down approach to services at the pop-up Barking Bathhouse in East London


T 10 CIBSE Journal October 2012


he bathhouse has returned to Barking. Nearly 30 years after the closure of the town’s Victorian baths, Hackney designers


Somebody & Son have created a flourishing health spa in the heart of the town. Hundreds of visitors have found rest


and recuperation at the Barking Bathhouse since it opened this summer. The 250m2 bathhouse includes a sauna, ice room, treatment rooms, relaxation yard and a cocktail bar serving up healthy elixirs under the trailing vines of a cucumber plant. The facilities may not be unusual for a suburban health club – but Barking’s


bathhouse is a pop-up project with planning permission for just two months, meaning the normal rules for designing spas have been ripped up and thrown in the Jacuzzi. ‘It’s a temporary building and it has a very


small budget,’ says Somebody & Son’s Paul Smyth. ‘Building services that may have been suitable for a building with a 30-year lifespan were not suitable here. There would have been no payback on investments such as solar thermals.’ The bathhouse could not be connected to


the gas mains because of the tight budget, which meant the team was constrained by how much energy the building could


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