Turkish Delights

29 June, 2010

The Victorians, whose exploits in colonising all points East had given them a passion for Orientalism, embraced the idea of Turkish baths with gusto. The first public hot baths in England since Roman times was built in Manchester in 1857 and, as the Turkish Bath Movement spread, advocating the use of such baths for good health and sanitation, 35 were built in Britain, first in the North and Midlands and then London.

In 1846 an Act of Parliament regulated their operation, including the proviso that no warm bath, shower bath or vapour bath intended for the labouring classes should cost more than two pence. For the poor of Britain’s industrial cities, with their basic sanitation and prevalence of bronchial diseases such as tuberculosis, these baths were a necessity, not a luxury.

In 2010, 16 Victorian-style Turkish baths remain open, five of them built in the 19th century. They include the magnificently ornate Porchester Hall in west London and the Harrogate Turkish Baths and Health Spa, owned and run by Harrogate Borough Council. In 2004 the Harrogate baths had a £1m renovation, under the guidance of conservation architect Peter Gaze Pace, to restore to their original 1897 splendour the Moorish arches and screens, vibrant glazed brickwork, Arabesque painted ceilings and terrazzo floors.

The so-called Turkish bath is in fact a modern version of the 2,000- year-old hot-air bath of the Romans. The name is given to the routine whereby the bather sweats freely in a room of hot air or steam (or in two or three such rooms at progressively higher temperatures), followed by a full body wash (sometimes preceded by a cold plunge), massaged and finally relaxes on a daybed in a cooling room. Today, if you delve into the back streets of any small town in Morocco or Turkey, you can still find the local hammam, where women wash each other’s hair and a male masseur will lather you up and pummel you on a marble slab.

But such places are becoming much harder to find than the luxury spa which has sprung up in every resort from Budapest to the Maldives. Rather than being an add-on to a stay in a luxury hotel, the spa is increasingly the destination itself. They have taken over the world so rapidly that their interior design has become fiercely competitive, and Swarovski crystals set into the walls are now almost de rigeur. So where else can spa design go from here?

“Some spas have become so smart, so clever, so over-designed that they’ve become intimidating and not user-friendly,” says Tony d’Alton, principal of A and J Dalton. “The Cotswold House Hotel spa is open to the general public, so we wanted to make it welcoming to anyone who walks in. We achieved that with transparency and views inside so they can see what goes on, and by using natural materials that reflect the surroundings. Many spas are hidden away in basements, but people generally don’t like going underground. I think there will be a trend towards locating spas in pavilion buildings attached, for example, to hotels. That said, the Four Seasons Hotel in Sharm-el- Sheikh coped ingeniously with its basement setting by introducing light through lower courtyard areas and lightwells, so that clients don’t feel cut off from the real world in a subterranean location. That spa is probably ahead of its time.”

Mark Plumtree also believes there is “room for a more affordable option”, but adds that “the location, the journey, the experience of embracing various treatments are all a way of stress busting in a busy lifestyle. As people travel further and more frequently, they bring back varied experiences, including those of luxury spas. I think more hotels here will begin to offer that experience. A mere four to five years ago, bathing in hotels here was a dowdy, aditional business, hidden away behind a door. Now the bathroom is part of the room experience and it can be exploited in lots of different ways and extended to spas – using spatial design to create open-plan areas, for example. The other major trend will be eco spas, influenced by the traditional hammams of North Africa, which are much more rough and ready. There will be a big movement towards using more natural products and locally sourced materials. And why do we need to use towels, which require so much laundering? We might design eco- friendly, low-energy, body driers. There are lots of things we’ve not yet thought of.”

With his experience of designing a luxury spa in Morocco, James Carry of the US firm Wilson Associates is very aware of the cultural tradition of the mmam, but thinks that spas will remain “a quiet experience, geared to European sensitivities. Luxury hotels don’t go hand-in-hand with communal baths,” he says. “But the hammam is such a rong concept that it inevitably influences spa design, especially through atrium courtyards and that whole indoor/outdoor relationship. We’ve come a long way from the very clinical-style spas of the Eighties and, as with restaurants, people now expect a lot more creativity in spas.”

Hugh Wallace of Douglas Wallace has different ideas. He has just begun work on a 10-year project in lgiers on the site of an old spa centre with Seventies’ buildings at Hammam Righa, based around a thermal spring of 68 deg F. His practice is designing a medical thermal spa and a five-star stination spa. He has noted how the old French spa there attracts extended families who turn a stay there into a party, just as the Finns and Swedes who go to the E’Spa in the Riga, Latvia, which he designed, go for a weekend, take over a whole floor and add food and entertainment to the experience.

“For the North African and Nordic races, the spa is a communal activity,” he says. “For Europeans and North Americans, it’s a very private one. And I find the idea of sitting in a spa in your swimwear quite bizarre; it defeats the point.

“I think the way forward for spas is to become more medically focused. In Algiers, you go to one with your doctor for a prescribed treatment – very often for muscular problems and pain. Spas will become much bigger, and will be owned more by medical practitioners than by hotels. The hotels may still exist alongside, but they will be there for respite from the medical treatment.

“In Algeria, spas are owned by the government, as part of the health service, as they are recognised as a form of treatment. The luxury end of spas will continue in years to come, but will be challenged. There needs to be more to it in future in terms of medical response, not just pampering.”

If Wallace is right, it seems that spas are going full circle – back to their origins.

Grass Act
Mark Plumtree and Blue Spa & Leisure are collaborating on a luxury spa for the Lee Bay Hotel, the restoration of a partly listed Arts and Crafts hotel and new- build in north Devon, to open in 2011. The Atlantic Spa will feature a pool house with a grass sedum roof built on stilts over the lake in the gardens. Local dark grey slate will contrast with bright primary red, orange and green to reflect the colours of the flowers native to the surrounding Fuchsia Valley.