For many New Yorkers, bathhouses offer a welcome reprieve from busy city living. But as a swell of social bathhouses have taken the city’s wellness landscape by storm, SAINT, a new sauna experience from Alex Feldman and Amanda Hensen, has emerged with a model that highlights the city’s most precious commodity: privacy. The duo, who met as colleagues at WeWork, imagined offering harried New Yorkers an escape from the city with sauna sessions in private suites. To make their vision a reality, they commissioned BOND, one of AN Interior’s Top 50 Architects and Designers last year, to design their Chelsea location, which opened this spring.
From the street, SAINT is mysterious yet inviting. Warm, filtered light spills out, promising respite from behind a fluted glass window. BOND principal Daniel Rauchwerger told AN Interior that the glass motif was drawn from the material vernacular of a past New York: “As spatial designers, we wanted to create something that was almost like artwork that could act as a signifier, so that someone passing by in the street would recognize it from another location without needing a logo.” BOND created an exterior calling card for SAINT, which is already planning to open other New York locations.
After entering, one is enveloped by the monastic lobby, which features a softly glowing circular light installation, a subtle homage to the works of James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson. An architectural model of the space is also on display. It’s only from this viewpoint that one can fully appreciate the jigsaw puzzle–like configuration of SAINT’s four private sauna suites. “Each pod was designed like a Tetris piece,” Rauchwerger said, explaining that the interlocking spaces devised by the firm were informed by the spatial constraints of SAINT’s narrow footprint and the programmatic demands of the sauna cycle.
A long, portal-like hallway branches out to connect the four rooms. It is color drenched in muted black limewash and illuminated by a low glow from thoughtful, hidden lighting interventions by lighting architects Emy After Dark. Designed to simulate the fading away of the city’s hustle and bustle, the dim passage encourages visitors to reconnect with their senses.
With SAINT, BOND referenced the traditional material language of saunas while placing its own unique spin on the space. Warm, wood-paneled walls in the vanity area create a natural sense of separation between the modestly sized unit’s wet and dry areas while also echoing the timber in the adjacent cedar-lined sauna. A sleek, stainless steel cold-plunge tub clad in cool gray slate lends a Brutalist undertone to the space. Understated yet playful design decisions like a black terrazzo counter and spoke-and-wheel faucet handles from Brooklyn-based company Watermark deliver visual intrigue.
“Of the different finishes in the space, it’s probably the most literal in its reference to water,” said Rauchwerger of the steampunk knobs. “But as with our other projects, our firm is sometimes not so afraid to be literal,” he continued, emphasizing that the studio’s approach is deeply rooted in its relationship with its greatest muse: New York City. “It’s a very literal city—what you see is what you get.”
