Upcycled sauna by ika.architekti

Born from a passion for collecting discarded materials and a desire to escape the digital workspace, this project redefines the concept of a DIY sauna. As architects, we transformed a “hoarding habit” into a sustainable construction experiment in a large city garden.

Materiality & Construction: The design relies heavily on upcycled resources. The foundation is built from reclaimed wooden sleepers, while the primary load-bearing structure utilizes second-hand 1x1m pallets. The floor and roof were pieced together from leftover beams, planks, and cement-bonded particle boards gathered from friends and various construction sites.

Natural Insulation: The most distinctive feature is the thermal insulation: raw sheep wool sourced from a local shepherd. We manually cleaned the wool and stuffed it into the walls, creating a high-performing natural envelope, protected by reflective and façade foils.

Exterior Identity: The facade consists of a wooden grid clad in second-hand corrugated fiberglass panels. Overlapped like scales, the panels are bent around the corners to soften the structure’s volume, creating a unique aesthetic from materials that would otherwise have ended up as waste.