Stuttgart, Germany

Bad (bath)

Infrastructural leisure equipment

SMAQ

BAD (bath) situated in the Solitude palace gardens nearby Stuttgart. Courtesy of SMAQ

BAD (bath) is a temporal architecture situated in the highly frequented leisure landscape of Solitude palace gardens close to Stuttgart in Germany.

Image courtesy of SMAQ

BAD (bath) is based on a 1,000-meter garden hose that plugs via a hydrant into the hidden existing infrastructure network and can carry enough water to fill a bathtub for up to two persons to take a bath. Arranged in countless loops, the elastic hose forms the surface of a screen that catches the sun, thus heating the water in the hose. After the bath the water is released to irrigate the surroundings.

Image courtesy of SMAQ

BAD (bath) interprets ways of inhabiting and interpreting the urbanized landscape, based on infrastructural realities and leisure conventions. It proposes an alternative, self-empowered form of leisure. It draws on the anarchic expertise of everyday knowledge (the warming up of water in a garden hose) instead of investing in capital-intensive technology (like teflon-wear and carbon fiber bikes). It opportunistically joins for a brief spatial moment the circuits that have become antipodes of the contemporary environment: infrastructure and nature. Without dogmatism it makes use of both of them, releasing their multiplied potentials and extracting pleasure from the appropriation of already existing systems. Pushed to an extreme, beyond the criteria of efficiency, the subversive gesture is architecturalized and explored further on the tectonic level. The rigid and elastic material qualities of wooden slats and the garden hose respectively are played out against each other and reintegrated, so that ornament authentically sneaks back into architectural expression.

Detail bath tub. Courtesy of SMAQ

Materials: ¾ garden hose, 38/5 mm transparent hose, brass fitting, and CNC-milled and oiled multiplex wooden board.

Detail hose weave. Courtesy of SMAQ

Manunfactures: hoses by REHAU, fittings by Geka Karasto, multiplex by Thermopal, screws by Würth, spacers by Roth.

Detail wooden flooring and bench. Courtesy of SMAQ

Contractor: CNC-milling by Höss Design

Image courtesy of SMAQ

The project was supported by the Akademie Schloss Solitude and the Architekturgalerie Am Weissenhof. All materials as well as the CNC-milling were donated by the individual companies.

BAD (bath) in use. Courtesy of SMAQ

BAD (bath) at night. Photo by Bjoern Reissmann

Manual. Courtesy of SMAQ

Hose weave unfolded and wooden structure. Courtesy of SMAQ

Europaconcorsi Beta

Bad (bath)