The Wet House is an evolution of the “kitchen-less” house, that was a typology extracted from the original designing through disruption experiments. With the kitchen removed entirely, it is no longer an obstacle, allowing the bathroom to take over. The protagonist of the Wet House is the bathroom itself. Alexander Kira, among others, criticised how bathrooms are treated as an after-thought and are often seen as an auxiliary space. So, what if the bathroom was your home, and there were bathing opportunities all over the house?
In the Wet House, the design opportunity generated, by bringing in the public typology of bath houses, is that the entire ground floor is taken over by the bath. Although use of the bath would be determined by the occupant, the interface between public and private space is articulated through materiality, with glass bricks used for translucency, and clear glass for openness. The glass brick also distorts views in, allowing some level of privacy for the occupant, whereas areas of clear glazing allow for uninterrupted views out, creating a visual connection to the context. By allowing the bath to take over the ground floor, dynamic relationships form between interior and the street. Greater levels of internal privacy are generated when the bath is full, as the glass bricks will become further obscured by steam and condensation. This is a reimagination of bathroom design, as we currently design them to extract moisture and add ventilation to ensure humidity levels stay as low as possible. In the bath house, the traditionally solid, dry living room becomes flooded with water, and dry, purified air becomes saturated. The mediums we associate with internal home environments have changed state, provoking radicalised domestic design.