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Standing before a cold and heartless night, a position for the ‘hearth’ is confidently and delicately chosen. The fire is suddenly ripe with delight. The unhurried process of burning transforms the haunting of ‘ghoulish effigies’ into their former selves: trees and bugs. A night of survival is for the brave and practical. One must instinctually perform to stay alive and build a home where no civilization exists. My great yearning for the outdoors has left me with a high level of sympathy towards the innate habits which all humanity unconsciously embraces. These are the impulses our ancestors used to survive and craft the world around us.
Unfortunately, today we act without instinct and indeed we express this issue in our architecture: denial of the senses, loss of context, little purpose, refusal of higher meaning and no intuitiveness. Our priorities have switched gears towards the philosophies of technology forgetting that architecture and science should never be separated. We have become a counter-intuitive society without purpose. We erect oversized boxes which deny our human scale and habits. We are physiologically and mentally taxing humanity.
Conveniently, a simple examination of our primal to modern lives will provide the answer to this deep crisis. The innate habits we use everyday is the key to intuitive architecture. With purpose comes intuition. We all crave architecture that provides our senses with an immersive experience. Therefore, the bathhouse—an ancient typology—will be an example to root our designs.
Suitably, the majestic Lake Superior brings all to their knees with the frigid blue water. After one long and arduous journey in the woods, I was left dirty, hot and irritated. The smell of the lake seasoned in the heavy winds of summer drew me quickly. I saw sharp splendor as I gazed upon the vast expanse of the horizon. I slowly submerged myself into the tranquil lake. My muscles tensed, my body paralyzed and my mind became hypersensitive. I practiced the purification of ablution which primordial cultures traditionally invoked. The Bathhouse embodies this experience and provides a rest from our counter-intuitive architecture of today.
Palisade Head and Lake Superior convene at the edge of a primordial landscape. Rock and debris are indomitable apart from the sharp, blue waters. Nothing escapes Lake Superior. The bath house so instinctually connects with the interaction between land and water that Lake Superior becomes a principal example. The protruding shelf of Palisade Head interrupts the rhythms of the water like a colossal man entering a wave. The site views this natural event over the course of the harsh year.
Providentially, because the cliff side is connected to a public lake, the Bathhouse once more intuitively unites the site. Seriously taking into account the private versus public land, this public typology will not take away a resource that we so dearly need but rather invites public participation with nature. The significance of the bathhouse on this cliff allows the public to make use of an unused landscape. Currently, this terrain in uninhabited but through propagation and acoustic dampening, the site will enliven the North Shore—as if Lake Superior was never whole without the Bathhouse.
--excerpt: A Need For a New Desire
Masters Thesis by jeremiah i. johnson
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