Inside, the experience unfolds vertically. The ground floor, shaded by the forest canopy, accommodates the reception—a space that benefits from the intimate, subdued lighting filtering through the trees. Anchoring this level, a central core lined in warm teak houses the locker rooms and showers, its tactile richness counterbalancing the rawness of the concrete shell.

The first floor opens dramatically into a lounge framed entirely in glass. Here, perched among the upper reaches of the poplar canopy, the outside world seeps in—leaves brushing the windows, breezes lifting through operable glass panels—blurring the line between interior retreat and forest immersion.

But it’s on the second floor that the building’s quiet drama reaches its crescendo. Here, a series of pools of varying temperatures, discreetly delineated by curved concrete walls, lie beneath a grid of towering lightwells. Rendered in rough concrete, the eight-metre-high wells softly funnel daylight down across the water, animating the surfaces with shifting, dappled reflections. Narrow strip windows just above the waterline offer bathers dreamy glimpses of rock cliffs and rustling treetops, deepening the sense of suspension and reverie.

Rather than retreating underground, the bathhouse that Vector Architects designed elevates the ritual of bathing into a kind of slow-motion ascent—a gentle immersion not only into water but up into the air, light, and surrounding forest.