Public Luxury

WINNER [1] of London Urban Retreat: Haggerston Public Baths

+ WINNER [1]

London Urban Retreat: Haggerston Public Baths

[20014]

Public Luxury: An Expanded Understanding of the Environment

Team

Instagram: @zoeeliseingram

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoe-ingram/

Nationality: Australian

Institution: The London School of Architecture

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This reimagining of Haggerston Baths offers sensory richness through shared infrastructure, allowing individuals to breathe purified air, experience plant-regulated humidity, and inhabit seasonally responsive spaces. The bathhouse provides an ideal test typology; originally designed as an actively controlled environment for public health. This project proposes an expanded understanding of the environment, encompassing dynamic relationships between plants, humans, and existing building systems. Rather than deferring to mechanical climate control, the project explores symbiosis to create dynamic microclimates with curated atmospheric qualities within the historic bathhouse framework.

The project transforms the traditional public bath into a living ecosystem where environmental quality becomes a collective resource. By integrating phytoremediation systems, responsive plant communities, and adaptive building technologies, it creates spaces that actively improve their well-being while contributing to urban ecological health. The aim is to democratize access to optimal environmental conditions typically reserved for private luxury spaces. 

The resulting scheme represents a shift from public facilities as basic service provision to environmental abundance, where sensory experience becomes an accessible public right. Users inhabit spaces that benefit from these conditions while the bathhouse operates as both social infrastructure and environmental remediation system. The project serves as a prototype for civic architecture, demonstrating how public buildings can function as agents of collective care and shared atmospheric commons.

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Jury Comments

– Leire Álvarez

A highly sensitive approach to a project embedded in a strong cultural context, carefully integrating new uses while projecting the site into the future. The proposal embraces principles of circularity, sustainability, and bioclimatic architecture, ensuring a balanced dialogue between heritage, contemporary intervention, and environmental responsibility.

– Pablo Castillo

This proposal distinguishes itself through the exceptional quality and clarity of its drawings, which convincingly communicate both spatial and technical ambition. It demonstrates a refined attention to climate, integrating plants, air, and seasonal variation as core drivers of the architectural concept rather than as secondary systems. At the same time, its careful engagement with the existing structure and realistic environmental strategies make the project both visionary and feasible.

– Josefine Fokdal

This project rethinks spaces for public health by creating a prototype for a symbiotic way of co-existing between different spieces and how it impacts humans heath. The level of detail is extraordinary and well throught through However, the actual context is not well ingerated and the title is no good.