Something & Son is the creative force behind FARM:shop, a three-storey city farm that produces everything it sells on-site, from fresh tilapia – courtesy of a mini aquaponic fish farm – to a vast selection of plants grown in hi tech indoor allotments that are more like laboratories.

Its innovative design led to Something & Son being approached to come up with an art and design installation in Barking, east London, in the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games. The concept they put forward was the Barking Bathhouse – a ‘social and affordable’ pop-up spa inspired by an original 1890s bathhouse in the area.

Situated in a car park, Barking Bathhouse resembled a giant beach hut from the outside. Inside it had a café/bar serving organic cocktails under a growing canopy of cucumbers, an outdoor/indoor relaxation garden and a shingle beach for sunbathing. The spa also had a wood-fired sauna, an ice room, and three therapy rooms with time slots staring at £10 (US$16, €12) for 15 minutes and going up to £35 (US$56, €42) for an hour. It became so popular that it stayed open for 11 weeks (three week longer than planned). Co-founder, Paul Smyth, says the concept is now going to be used to create a permanent facility and that this in turn is likely to be duplicated in two other cities. We talk to him about how it all came about.

How would you describe the design?
Eco-industrial chic. We were inspired by Barking’s industrial past and with the idea of converting an old warehouse into a spa with trees growing through the building and furniture crafted from reclaimed materials.

It cost around £230,000 (US$369,000, €273,900) to set up – we were really cautious about investing too much because we knew it wouldn’t be there for long. But the simple aesthetic was actually very popular.

What worked well?
The Barking Bathhouse was a very sociable spa space where people could really relax. We had a lot of regular customers who praised the simplicity of what we were doing and also really liked the competitive pricing.

Being a pop-up gave us more freedom to experiment with the design, the fit-out and the operation, but it also presented some unusual challenges because of the temporaray nature of the operation.

What obstacles did you face?
Although we got a three-week extension, we weren’t as busy during that period because we didn’t market it as well and lots of people though we’d closed by that stage.

Also the bar slightly underperformed. It was quite busy, but we would’ve liked to have sold more food and drink, and for it to have been more lively in the evenings. And, at times, the outside spa facilities were cold.

These are all things we’ll address in the permanent Barking Bathhouse which is due to open on a new site in Barking in May 2014.

In the meantime, we’ve recreated three of the treatment rooms at the back of the Barking Learning Centre, as we wanted to keep the concept going and keep the team together. We’ve used the time to connect with people in the local area, which we didn’t have the time to do with the pop-up, and bookings have really increased recently.

What will the permanent Barking Bathhouse be like?
We’re still finalising plans, but it will feature three and a half treatment rooms – the spaces will be flexible, with partitions that allow us to transform them into larger spaces for classes and events. It will have a bar and café, but we’ll expand on the food offering.

The design will be timber again and industrial, but slightly more finished than the pop-up. The spa will have a big chimney, centred around a wood-burning furnace providing heating for the building.

We’ll have a wood-fired sauna and we’re looking at bringing in some clever, low-energy, low carbon systems to run hot tubs. We also hope to have standalone greenhouse/solarium. The design will retain the indoor/outdoor experience, with a walled garden, but it will be designed for year round use.

What opportunities do you see?
We’re talking to organisations in Bristol and Brighton (in the UK) about creating more bathhouses. Our key criteria is to partner with organisations which share our vision and love the concept. We’d be really open to working with an established spa operator or someone who wanted to invest.

We genuinely want to change spa culture, make spas more affordable, and to get people to use them more regularly.