Students Build 40-Metre Timber Sauna Shaped Like a Ship's Hull

Fifteen architecture students have completed Skroget, a 40-metre-long community sauna and public deck overlooking the harbour of Båtsfjord, known as Norway's fishing capital. The structure takes its name from the Norwegian word for hull.

The student studio Rare Collectiv, drawn from the Design in Context course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), designed and built the project almost entirely from reclaimed timber. The wood came from a building recently dismantled by the local municipality.

The design process began with 15 individual proposals. The team discussed and developed these, narrowed them down to three designs, and selected the final scheme by vote.

Skroget's defining feature is a row of nineteen timber portals, angled towards the harbour to create a sloping roof. This roof extends to shelter a walkway and seating area on the southern side of the building. The walkway links the public entrance and fire pit at the western end to the sauna at the eastern end, with changing rooms and showers in between.

"This concept of the continuous hallway allows visitors to explore the building without a dead end, but rather exit and explore a different space of the site," the team explained.

The students positioned the sauna close to the water for a reason. "For us, the line where the sea meets the land was the most interesting part of the site, and we wanted to be able to connect the sauna experience close to the cold water so in future it is possible to create a bathing possibility," Rare Collectiv told Dezeen.

The elongated building also creates two distinct sides. "Through the long building we created two sides – a rough waterside and a more protected side toward the land and south. Even with stronger winds, the walls provide shelter to enjoy the sun from the south," the team said.

The timber frame itself carries the project's central image. "Together, the wooden frames evoke the carcass of a fish, or, as suggested by the name of the project, the hull of a ship," the studio added.

The structure contains public seating areas, a sauna room and a terrace with a fire pit on a rocky bank at the water's edge.

Contrasting with the reclaimed-wood structure, the 15-square-metre sauna was built from new wooden elements. It has a dark brown wooden exterior and a pale birch interior.

For the external furniture, the team designed a family of benches, tables and chairs with sloping seats and backrests that echo the building's angular frames.

Skroget joins a growing body of student-built saunas in Norway. Rabagast Studio, led by NTNU students in Trondheim, previously created a small timber sauna floating on a lake in Innlandet. Other recent sauna projects featured on Dezeen include a crystal-shaped structure in northern Sweden by Bigert & Bergström and Puusauna in Finland, which Jaakko Torvinen supported with a colonnade of tree trunks.

The photography is by Merethe Amundsen Ruud unless otherwise stated.

With its reclaimed skeleton and its link to future bathing facilities at the water's edge, Skroget points to a model of community architecture built from what a municipality no longer needs.