Travel to the Bath

Type: Competition//Project: Daiwa house competition//Site: Japan

Prize: Finalist

Nakedness was normal when humans first appeared in this world.

Physically, being naked and exposing your bare skin to the surroundings allows humans to become intimate with the world. Mentally, these are also the moments when people become most emotional, sensitive and vulnerable to their surroundings.

However, with the advancement of civilization, human skin was gradually becoming protected and covered. Naked behavior is reduced to a limited space. As far as the house in civilized society is concerned, this space is a bathroom. Moreover, there is only a few minutes of naked activity before bathing as the bathrooms of modern homes are only one door away from the living space.

By extending this naked period between daily activities and bathing, we proposed a space where people can feel the surroundings by touching, listening, feeling and immersing themselves in the space where they can be naked. In other words, we extend the corridor from the living room to the bathroom to make it a "journey." In the process of taking a bath, we would like you to gradually increase the degree of exposure to your skin. By increasing the degree of skin exposure, we would like you to increase your contact with nature and your awareness of nature.

Just as how people enjoy everyday bathing, I would like to gradually merge this "journey", which goes from undressing to bathing and go from half-naked to naked, into family life, memories and bonds.

Playing a musical instrument half-naked in the spring, stretching naked on the lawn in the fall, making a snowman near the bath naked in the winter, drinking cold drinks, You can enjoy all these various touching moments under naked or half-naked condition. Furthermore, in Japanese culture, there is an activity for families to take a bath together, and here can become the place where families can interact naked with each other.

On the other hand, in the "journey", you can hear the footsteps and the sound of water from the neighbor's "journey", and you can interact intimately and indirectly without looking visually. This indirect contact gives people the opportunity to physically and mentally touch the space and feel close to each other.