A Look at Open-Air Showers

Queenstown gets cold in winter, hence the installation of a sauna. Outside, the landscaping was kept deliberately casual, with rock walls and gravel paths.

Norwegian summers are short, and it’s customary to spend as much time outdoors as possible," says Kari K. Holm, who with her husband, German-born architect Jürgen Kiehl, created a residence in the remote area of Hanko, Norway. Read the full article here.

The glass and wood walls of the bathhouse, like other retractable panels on the house, offer shade with a view.

Mimicking the cantilever of the house, an outdoor shower just off the master bedroom stretches out gently toward the surrounding woods.

The balcony is notable for its outdoor shower.

The evening bath is a ritual in Japan, and public baths are still around, but this is a new twist. Moriyama curtains the bath during use, but won’t cover any other windows, “because it feels good to couple the inner space with the outside world.”

"Personally, I’d rather be living outside,” says architect David Hertz, who created a compound—four dwellings connected by bridges and clustered around a courtyard lap pool—for himself and his family in Venice, California. Sophie, 11, rinses off in the outdoor shower made from 12-by-12-inch Syndecrete tiles cut into 3-by-3-inch squares, which Hertz intentionally set so that they appear to undulate. The sink is from Boffi; the shower fixtures are Arne Jacobsen for Vola. Read the full article here.