Studio Three Sixty creates Sauna Theatre for Edinburgh Fringe festival

Design practice Studio Three Sixty has created a temporary sauna that is being used as a theatre during Edinburgh‘s Fringe festival for the performing arts.

Designed by Studio Three Sixty director Lucy Osborne, who is also co-creative director of Sauna Sessions Arts Club, the functioning sauna can seat up to 82 people for performances.

“Sauna Theatre is conceived as a new kind of cultural space – the UK’s first purpose-built sauna arts centre and the UK’s largest sauna,” Osborne told Dezeen.

“It disrupts the familiar architecture of sauna with the tools of theatre: lighting, surround sound and performance focus.”

Located within the rear courtyard of Summerhall Arts in central Edinburgh, the venue will be hosting shows throughout the Fringe festival.

The performances will be based on the idea of Aufguss – a wellness ritual led by a sauna master, along with dance-based “rave” sessions.

The theatre space was designed to evoke a traditional sauna with Ayous timber benches arranged in a horseshoe shape around three large sauna stoves.

“The ambition was for the room to feel suited to the focus required by a performance but still unmistakably like a sauna,” said Osborne. “We wanted the room to feel warm, social and collective rather than formal.”

“Materially, we hope the space feels gentle and calm, so the internal timber was a key part of the design,” she continued. “We used Ayous for the sauna benches and interior surfaces because it is a dark wood with a soft and cool quality to touch. ”

The sauna was conceived by Sauna Sessions Arts Club founders Osborne and James Grieve after they observed numerous similarities between theatres and saunas.

By combining the two, they believe they have created a space with “a heightened communal state that is immersive and even transformative”.

“We are massive sauna fans, thanks in part to spending so much time working on various projects in Norway and Sweden,” said Osborne. “And as we sat in various saunas together, we started noticing that saunas have a lot in common with theatres.”

“Both saunas and theatres are communal spaces where strangers share an intense, live experience together in real time,” she continued.

“In each place, there’s a kind of unspoken agreement to be present, to put daily life on pause, and to enter into a shared understanding with other people around you – strangers and friends or family.”

Osborne and Grieve wanted the venue to be more than a giant sauna, with theatre lighting integrated into the design to allow the space to be transformed for each performance.

“We’re not just putting theatre in a hot room,” said Osborne. “We’re trying to create a new cultural space in which to experience art whilst feeling great.”

“There are no windows and the space is blacked out and lit by theatre lights, so we have complete control over atmosphere, emotional tone and colour,” she continued.

“Keeping the heat in is a technical challenge in some ways, but the architecture also has to create the right conditions for a living and organic space which is managed by our sauna masters, with an ebb and flow of heat, cool air, water and steam.”

Adding lighting and sound to the hot and humid space was one of the key challenges to enable the space to function both as a sauna and a theatre.

“Conventional theatre equipment cannot simply be placed inside a sauna – many components would get too hot, or would not withstand the temperature and moisture levels,” said Osborne.

“We had to find a hybrid solution, combining fixtures that could cope with the sauna environment with six overhead glass windows, allowing a lighting rig above the room to shine down into the space,” she continued.

“That lets us bring theatrical control and atmosphere into the sauna without compromising desired heat and moisture levels during performance.”

Externally, the sauna theatre, which was designed to be dismantled and moved from place to place, features bright signage and includes numerous social and support spaces.

Along with showers, changing rooms and lockers, there is also a cold plunge pool.

Overall Osborne and Grieve hope that the Sauna Theatre will introduce some people to sauna and demonstrate how theatre can be part of people’s wellness routines.

“We know many of our audience members will be first-time sauna goers, and that is a thrilling responsibility,” said Osborne.

“We have created Sauna Theatre in the fundamental belief that art and culture are good for human beings – and that ‘wellness’ shouldn’t exclude things like reading, going to the theatre, or listening to music,” she continued.

“Good theatre sends you back out into the world a different person from the one who arrived, and this is our hope for Sauna Theatre. That great artists can harness delicious heat to take us on magical journeys and leave us surprised, delighted and changed.”

Recent saunas featured on Dezeen include a crystal-shaped sauna in Sweden and a floating timber sauna on a lake in rural Norway.

The photography is by Paul Zanre, unless stated.

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