Salpure Jjimjilbang
Demilitarised Zone, 37°55'11.3"N 126°41'21.3"E
The environmental and social requirements of bathhouses give rise to a spatial language that navigates between transition and division, procession and compartmentalisation. This proposal seeks to maintain the traditional gendered spaces and sequential experiences of temperature and ritual while addressing the additional, overriding, national division that bisects the site.
Here the border between the two nations is both a window and a mirror, The pools, shared by both sides provide a meditation on differences and similarities, closeness and distance, at the bather's simultaneously most vulnerable and open states.
The visitors bathe under the open sky through an opening that resembles a healing wound on the land. This wound is bandaged in places, providing areas of shelter, and bridged at the centre. Here the ondol-heated sleeping room that forms the heart of the bathhouse provides a place for men, women, North Koreans and South Koreans alike to sleep together, united for those hours through experience, under a single undulating roof.
The physical barrier of the border which carries the weight of decades of cultural separation is made visually permeable through a screen that grants a fleeting connection between societies. This screen is intended to instil an introspective meditation as if it were a mirror. In the visitors' naked state, they are stripped of divisive ornamentation and forced to relate with their foreign reflections with whom they share environments.
Since many ritual traditions have been phased out in North Korean society, the reference to Salp'uri is distilled into the hanging white drapes to represent a wider concept of purification and truce as well as opportunities to conceal oneself as one bathes. Though not overt, these features evoke the movements and fluidity, and restraint of the dance while dividing up the vast space.
The long ribons of cloth straddle the border like the arms of the shaman linking both sides just as the shared water they dip into.
Paulownia trees are native to the region and are often cited as the fastest growing hardwoods, being used traditionally in construction, furniture making and ornamental planting. This will provide the timber elements of the bathhouse due to its sustainability and its cultural and ritual significance in craftsmanship - most notably in the creation of traditional musical instruments.
The paleness and undulating grain of its raw form complements the white drapes and the water, while its resistance to warping makes it practical for the steamy environment.
The layout of the bath house takes the gender specific zones of a typical jimjilbang and duplicates it either side of the border creating 4 quadrants. In the central spaces, genders may mix at the entrance, refreshments area and sleeping room. While the border remains an absolute boundry to access, it is always visually permeable - there is no visibility between gendered and mixed zones.
The scheme only creates the illusion of symmetry as each quadrant has unique elements to adapt to each demographic's practical needs or cultural leanings. Examples include:
Larger changing provision for North Korean women due to greater female population in military service.
Entrances on either side reflecting their nation's architectural trends.
Communal seated shower areas arranged to facilitate different levels of social intimacy between women and men.
Provision of more vanity units on South Korean women's changing rooms.