Joint design & built workshop of Estonian Academy of Arts Interior Architecture Department and Vilnius Academy of Arts

The sauna is titled as “Snail” due to the gesture that each person is forced to make to enter and use the hot space. To enter the wooden cabin you have to bend over and then re-emerge in the area saturated with boiling air. There are no access doors, but only an open and lower corridor designed specifically to avoid heat loss. 

It took the students of the Estonian Academy of Arts EKA and the Vilnius Academy of Arts four days to develop a concept into a prototype, and open a public sauna in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia. Why a sauna? Because for students of spatial design, sauna proposes a unique design task with engineering, basic functionality, constructional physics and ergonomics challenges – whilst also being poetically captivating as a sample of a Northern European spatial typology.

Guidelines for users: TIGU sauna is a gift to all Lithuanians and visitors; it welcomes all polite and responsible users, who take care of the space and are happy to use the space at their own risk.

Students: Kaarel Kuusk, Päär-Joonap Keedus, Eeros Lees, Monica Mustjõgi, Kelli Puusepp, Elis Rumma, Rimtė Raudeliūnaitė, Gabrielė Šidlauskaitė, Giedra Virbickaite, Ieva Glumac, Agnė Rubytė, Aurelija Kniukštaitė