The arc-shaped top silhouette adds a friendly touch to the exterior, visually lightens the box, and enhances interior spaciousness. A carved hand space on the left wood slab facilitates door opening without a physical handle. When the door is closed, light “leaks” through the gap, inviting users to a warm preheated room.

Interior wall is split into two halves: The top half, with lighter tone, is designed for the mind experience. A surrounding ambient light shines on the fabric to create an immersive experience. The bottom half, with a darker tone, is designed for the body experience. Heating panels are thoughtfully ensconced within the in hemp fabric to give user a cozy feel.

In collaboration with James Turrell’s lighting engineer, Matthew Schreiber, our high-fidelity LED lighting system creates immersive lightscapes inspired by nature’s sunsets and auror skies.

The interior chamber includes a comfortable reclining wood chair and a smaller fold-down guest seat.

How can we let our mind travel? How do people relax?

We explored various modalities that aid in relaxation, aiming to create a multi-sensory experience encompassing scent, heat, sound, vibration, light, and visual elements.

How does it live in our homes?
We explored various design directions, including a permanent sauna box for home use, a furniture-sized product with a minimal footprint, a product capable of transitioning between an 'on' and 'off' state, as well as ideas for partitions to create dedicated spaces within our homes.

To get a good feel of ergonomic concerns, we jumped into full-scale models early on. We built a dozen foam core boxes with different dimensions to get a sense of scale and to test different sitting layouts. Finding a balance of size and comfort was the goal of the exercise.

We narrowed down to top 2 directions: 'Walk In' and 'Nook.' The 'Walk In' concept entails a permanent box specifically designed for the immersive sauna experience. On the other hand, the 'Nook' concept offers a box that can be opened up to provide additional seating when the sauna is not in use. Eventually, ‘Walk In’ was chosen because we want the product to stand proudly and optimized for the ultimate user experience.

After confirming the size of the box, we built a wooden sauna box for all our testing. We built chairs to find the comfortable sitting position for one and two users, we also added heating panels to find the best position while minimizing energy consumption. During the project our team would end every day inside our heated mockups to get a feel for our concepts, blending innovation and relaxation.

Lighting was installed in the box to test out different lighting positions, intensity levels, diffusion materials, projection methods, and more. We want the light show to starts from the eye level, and gradually fades towards the top, resembling a sunset. By adding a curve to the top corner, we're tricking the eye to make the inside look larger than it actually is.

We designed exterior that is simple yet attractive, seamlessly blending into modern home. Lighting elements were incorporated to effectively communicate and warmly invite users to step inside.

We collaborated with Vorrath Woodworks to create a fully functional, full-scale sauna that accurately embodies our design intent. The end result surpassed the initial renders, everyone was excited to see it in production.