My decision to design an eastern bathing establishment in the centre of Amsterdam fits within the renewed interest in body culture. Transplanting a building type that arose in early Islamic culture into the present-day Western world raises both sociocultural and architectural issues. Hamam Amsterdam expresses the subtleties of the man-woman relationship found in Western society yet at the same time conforms to the most basic Islamic values and standards as regards privacy. To discover the specific properties and spatial qualities of a hamam I made examinations of historical bathhouses in Budapest and Turkey.

I chose a dead-end alley (Kromelleboogsteeg) as the site for my bathhouse. An oasis of peace and quiet amidst the chaos of the city, it leads from the Rokin boulevard to Hamam Amsterdam. My bathhouse design fully intermeshes the areas for men and women and falls programmatically and architecturally into three zones.

The first zone is discovered at the end of the alley and combines the entrance with a large walnut 'dressing-unit' which seems to hover above the visitors. The routes for men and women diverge on ascending this six-storey unit. However, as the changing rooms are interwoven, the two sexes still experience each other's proximity.

The second zone consists of a dark concrete passage off which are the toilets. This passage marks the transition to the bathing component, its tunnel effect emphasizing both the programmatic and the aural separation of the sexes.

The third zone is an elongated building likewise erected in dark concrete. It contains all the bathing rooms which are interlinked either horizontally or vertically. These connections are made along passageways and stairs in a narrow zone hugging the two long outer walls of the building. Each successive space brings a new experience with it.

The bathing rooms for women and those for men are symmetrically balanced around a central axis so that form-wise each is the mirror image of the other. Each sex experiences the other at one point only, while the presence of the other sex subliminally defines the spatial experiences in the complex as a whole.

Afterwards visitors descend the stairs along the wooden dressing-unit to the exit on bustling Kalverstraat. This restores the alley's original function as an element connecting two streets.

Place of education: AvB Arnhem
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Jan Kroes, Annemariken Hilberink, Wim Korvinus