photo: +POOL

In New York City, + POOL is an initiative to build a floating, Olympic-size pool in the East River. The proposed offering – which gets its name from its plus-shaped design – includes four pools in one: a children’s pool, sports pool, lap pool and lounge pool. Managing director Kara Meyer launched the organisation, developing it with the project’s designers.

The nonprofit has raised US$16 million (€14 million, £11.9 million) in capital funding and is planning its first 2,000sq m pool. The ambition is to provide public access to the city’s natural waters and to develop community programmes, including free swim lessons, environmental education and water stewardship activities.

“The idea was simple,” says Meyer. “What if you could carve out a small piece of the river and make it clean enough for people to regularly swim in? And what if you could change the relationship New Yorkers have to their rivers, just by giving them a chance to swim in them?”

The floating pool is unique because it acts like a giant strainer that can process up to 600,000 gallons a day – cleaning the very water it floats in. It boasts a three-step system consisting of a strainer, membrane filtration process and UV disinfection to remove bacteria and contaminants. Its 2024 test site in Lower Manhattan has garnered media attention and major support from the public – in large part because the project benefits everyone.

“We hope to reconnect city dwellers to their natural environment by giving them safe public access to city waters – and we believe that connection to nature is the ultimate wellness tool,” says Meyer. “We’re all interconnected – just like the world’s waters. Equitable access to wellness means better health outcomes for all.”

Floating pools in New York City are not new. Many immigrants in the early 19th century frequented establishments on the Hudson and East Rivers, built because their homes lacked bathing facilities. These eventually closed due to concerns over water quality. Now, the team at + POOL hopes to use modern technology to bring back the floating pool for recreation, joining facilities like the Badeschiff in Berlin or the Josephine Baker pool in Paris, but with the added benefit of using the water in which it floats to feed the pool and helping to clean the city’s waterways.

Once built, the plan is for the pool to be free and open to the public. Meyer explains that it will function like a public pool, but be operated by + POOL instead of the Parks Department, much like the High Line in New York City. Operations are currently funded through private contributions, though public funds have been given to capital construction.

Meyer hopes to take + POOL’s filtration technology, advanced engineering and design to other cities and says she’s already received interest from around the world. “New York is a tough place to build,” she says, “but as the saying goes: if we can make it here, we can make it anywhere!”

photo: Marie Fjeld bilde

The Oslo Badstuforening (OBF), or Oslo Sauna Association, is on a mission to bring ‘sauna to the people,’ with 25 floating saunas along the Oslo Fjord, which vary from bohemian community-built facilities to large event establishments. Locals pay an annual membership of NOK300 (US$29, €26, £22), or tourists can pay a one-off fee starting at NOK100 (US$10, €9, £7) for 90 minutes.

General manager Ragna Marie Fjeld used to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but when a DIY floating sauna made of driftwood appeared in the harbour, she and other diplomats worked to help make sure it could stay. “It turns out we needed each other,” says Fjeld. “The anarchists were good at building and getting things done and the diplomats were good at writing applications and speaking to the municipality.”

Soon after, in 2016, the OBF was formed. Today, it boasts more than 18,000 members and its facilities attract more than 260,000 visitors a year. “The effect the saunas have on people’s everyday lives motivates me,” says Fjeld. “Wellness should be for everyone – accessible and affordable.” In the sauna, she explains, everyone is equal, status symbols are shed and people from different backgrounds easily share new perspectives with one another. “This takes your wellness experience to another level,” she says.

As a nonprofit owned by its members, OBF’s mission is to bring ‘sauna to the people’, which includes keeping prices affordable. On top of the yearly fee, members pay varying amounts per visit depending on duration and the number of people in a group. Or for NOK575 (US$57, €50, £42) each month, they can take as many saunas as they like. About 20 per cent of its visitors are tourists and Fjeld says while the average age of guests is between 30-45, all ages are represented, with an increasing number of families and a new ‘senior sauna’ programme being introduced.

“‘Sauna to the people’ is not only our slogan, it’s our core value,” explains Fjeld. “We should be for people from all social classes, in all parts of the city, for every age and for people with disabilities and so on.” The OBF offers free saunas for refugees and school classes – and increasingly, they’re getting interest from municipalities around the world that want to bring a sauna movement to their own city.

Fjeld says she sees the rustic saunas on the Oslo harbourfront as supporters and friends of luxury spas – not as competitors and that they both can learn from each other. At the end of the day, she says, “there’s room for everyone and more awareness is positive. The sauna movement has enormous momentum at the moment and this is very exciting to be a part of.”

photo: Katie Bracher

During the 2012 London Olympics, a wood-fired pop-up sauna was erected in Barking as part of a cultural programme to educate the public about sauna culture around the world. There, Katie Bracher met members of the Finnish Sauna Society who wanted to help Brits set up a similar concept. “From the very beginning, we wanted there to be more saunas everywhere – we wanted everyone to know about saunas and to share the love,” says Bracher, who co-founded the British Sauna Society and now runs Wild Spa Wowo and Sauna Master UK.

The not-for-profit British Sauna Society started as a grass-roots movement to bring ‘more sauna to more people’ by promoting and developing sauna culture and educating people on its physical, mental and social benefits. “We were grounded in a strong sense of equality and inclusivity, focusing on public benefit and the greater good,” Bracher says. As a testament to that, she says price points for community saunas across the UK are an affordable £8-£20 (US$10.8-US$27.1, €9.5-€23.8) for 1-2 hours.

By 2017, Bracher was offered a role as the sauna master at a new pop-up sauna on London’s South Bank. “It was packed the whole time,” she recalls, “everyone loved it.”

Soon after, she built the pop-up Beach Box Sauna on the Brighton shorefront out of a converted horse box. Originally intended as a temporary fixture, it became so popular it expanded to three saunas, a chilled steel tub, cool plunge pool, freshwater showers and changing rooms. Its opening is seen as a key moment and has inspired the explosive growth of sauna culture in the UK over the past eight years. Today, Bracher reports that across Sussex, many of these saunas are fully booked each weekend, hosting 50-100 people per day.

“It’s interesting that once an idea takes hold, it ripples out widely,” says Bracher. “Horseboxes in the UK were having a moment, as it’s easier to get planning permission for temporary structures; many were being converted to coffee trucks and bars.” A sauna on the beach also made sense with England’s year-round cold seawater. Bracher explains: “People are looking for new ways to socialise that feel good and also benefit their health – a trend that was amplified by the pandemic.”

Over the past seven years, Bracher has hosted experienced sauna master trainers from all over Europe, helping to grow the British sauna movement by training more than 100 sauna masters in the art of leaf whisking and aufguss (see www.spabusiness.com/aufgusswm). She continues to deliver an ever-widening range of training through her work with Sauna Master UK.

With her role with the British Sauna Society, she was also part of the team that seeded the not-for-profit Hackney Community Sauna Baths in London in 2021, which has grown from a single location in Hackney to six across London. With a vision to bring local, affordable and authentic sauna to the UK, the baths host everything from aufguss events to storytelling, sound baths, yoga, breathwork, queer poetry, speed dating and even a sauna festival, The Saunaverse, which includes music, dance, workshops and sauna rituals.

Championing the smaller, community-focused, more rustic sense of the British sauna is something that Bracher is passionate about, especially as big event-style saunas are on the rise. Her latest project is Wild Spa Wowo, a forest glade wood-fired sauna sanctuary in Sussex that sits in a wooded area near a family campground. “It was an opportunity to set up a new site based in nature, creating space for innovation and events,” she says.

Bracher sees a bright future for Britain’s growing sauna movement. “There’s something very beautiful about the opportunity for particular communities – not just countries – to develop cultures of bathing that suit their needs,” she says. “I think this will continue to evolve globally.”