Löyly – An urban oasis occupying a stretch of beautiful Helsinki waterfront which offers unique sauna and restaurant experience and is listed by Time Magazine as World’s 100 Greatest Places to visit.
With Löyly (meaning the steam that comes when you throw water on hot stones in a sauna) Helsinki offers foreign visitors a public sauna experience – a must when visiting Finland. The building was designed slim and elongated so as not to cut the narrow park strip. The volume is kept as low as possible so that it doesn’t block views from the future residential blocks. The sauna is developed into an easy-going, faceted construction that is more part of the park than a conventional building. Now that the wooden building has turned gray, it is more like a rock on the shoreline.
The architectural idea is simple: there is a rectangular box containing the warm spaces that is covered with a free form wooden “cloak”. The structure protects the building from the harsh coastal climate. It shades the interior spaces and helps to reduce the use of energy to cool the building.
There are three different saunas that are all heated with wood including a traditional smoke sauna without a chimney – a true rarity in an urban sauna. You can swim in the sea and in the winter there is an “avanto”, hole in the ice for winter swimming.
Article provided by Löyly.
