Cars dancing endlessly round and around, drawing inaccessible circular spaces punctua@ng the city, looking for meaning. What about roundabout what?
Roundabout Bath is a temporary public bath transforming an impersonal and inaccessible fountain trapped at the centre of relentless traffic into an in@mate and communal experience where undressed bodies meet in water.
Pride of 19th century’s social movements promotng public hygiene for the working class, urban public baths have slowly closed their doors to be unsurprisingly replaces by private and commercial “wellness centres” , mirrors of our times.
Combining changing rooms, steam rooms and cold-water fountain basins, the Roundabout Bath offers privacy while occupying a central point in the city. Revealing hidden poten@als of
car dominated urban environment, the temporary public program hacks the street equipment and transforms our percep@on of this forgo8en spaces.
The high walls of the bathing facility are made of a regular @mber structure cladded with uncut wooden panels temporarily used for the installa@on. If the panels will find a second life a\er the festival, the fountain itself will go back to its uselessness, leaving behind only memories and new visions of what public space could be. The heart of the restless circle of motion, shaped by absence, will go back to oblivion; fountain pouring silver into the dark.
