Name: Luna Ghislaine van Arendonk
Track: Architecture
Studio: Borders & Territories
Year: MSc3/4 / 2025
Type: Graduation project
Tutor: Oscar Rommens, Marc Schooderbeek, Pierre Jennen, Filip Geerts
Description:
This project explores the loss of Georgia’s centuries-old bathing culture during its transition from East to West. A collective mapping on ‘Power Regimes and Bordering Practices’ in Tbilisi led to personal research on the neglect of Soviet-era bathhouses. A theory essay on ‘liminality’ and a mapping of Soviet healthcare strategies and bathhouse typologies informed the design of a semi-underground bathhouse located on a sulphur hot spring in the mountain region near Tbilisi. Embedded in rock and built with local metals, the design proposes a non-linear bathing sequence that reconnects body, landscape and tradition. By reshaping the existing mass, it is ‘shifting grounds’, both physically as well as culturally.