Tigu — meaning "snail" in Estonian — is a public sauna designed and built in four days by students of the Estonian Academy of Arts and Vilnius Academy of Arts, built to mark the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia.

The name refers to the gesture every user must make to enter: bending low through an open, doorless corridor designed specifically to minimise heat loss. To enter is to curl inward, like a snail retreating into its shell — and to re-emerge into a space saturated with heat.

For students of spatial design, a sauna is a uniquely demanding brief — it combines engineering, constructional physics, ergonomics, and basic functionality, while remaining one of the most poetically charged typologies in Northern European culture. The workshop took the concept from sketch to built prototype in four days, resulting in a functioning public sauna in Vilnius.

The project was featured in Domus magazine.

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