Ozone Ofuro | Incidental Architecture

Ozone Ofuro is a small private bath house and retreat in the garden of a previous project by Incidental Architecture (then Matt Elkan Architect), the Ozone House (see AIA Awards 2014).
It was conceived as a means of inhabiting this garden.

Materially, Ozone Ofuro is built on an exposed rock shelf with walls made out of rocks gathered entirely from the site. The intention is that the structure grows loosely out of what was already there.

Functionally, it is a two room semi enclosed screened space housing a bath and associated ante room that can be shut down completely for privacy or opened fully to engage with the landscape and surrounding decks. More significantly though, it is also a place of quietness and solitude.

It is a structure that could be seen as unnecessary. Yet, perhaps this extension beyond the pragmatic into the poetic is what actually makes it necessary.