In 2020, Schemata Architects reimagined a 1985 Japanese sento, or public bathhouse, into a Towada-clad destination complete with DJ booth and cafe. Last year, founder Jo Nagasaka and his team looked back to the history of the sento—and toward the future of a vacant lot nearby—when refreshing an extant bathhouse on the ground floor of a reinforced-concrete building in the Komae suburbs of Tokyo.
Traditionally, sento partition walls separated zones for men and women. Here, one rises some 7 feet high, not quite to the ceiling of the 1,000-square-foot bathhouse, carving out zones for saunas but also a bandai, or reception counter, where everyone can relax together over a beer. Postwar sento also boasted murals of Mount Fuji, a custom carried into the present via tile patchworks arranged in honor of the murals Nagasaka remembered from the Kyoto bathhouses he used to frequent.
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