H150: A Thermal Bath in Iceland Built Around a Floating Ring of Water

Most bathhouses ask you to step inside. H150 asks you to step out, into a ring of water that leaves the building, crosses a meandering river twice and returns, so that the bath becomes a route rather than a room. In a country where hot springs already sit in open landscape, the architecture's job here is not to contain the water but to draw a line through it.

H150 is a proposal by Mary Anikeeva, working with the Institute of Business and Design studio, for a site in Iceland. The project was Shortlisted at Thermal Blue. Its stated ambition is clear: to be a new point of attraction in Iceland, a center for rethinking the culture of thermal baths and a way of obtaining a unique experience of interacting with hot springs.

A Ring of Water Laid Across a Meandering River

From above, the composition reduces to two forms. A white half-cylinder sits on the grass, its flat back facing the approach road and its curved front opening toward the river. Bolted onto that curve is a full circle of raised water, a channel that loops out over the river's bends and lands back at the building. The river does not get straightened or tamed; it keeps its loose, wandering line, and the ring simply hovers across it.

The contrast is the point. Against the irregular blue of the river and the faint contour lines of the terrain, the circle reads as a precise human mark, yet it is made of the same material as the landscape it crosses. The building stays low and pale, almost a plinth for the water rather than the protagonist.

Drawing the Circle Out of the Site

The analysis sheet shows how the project got there. Pencil and blue crayon sketches move from a map of Iceland and studies of local hot springs, pools, waterfalls and white buildings, to a sequence of site diagrams where circles are tested against the river in different sizes and positions. Notes on the sheet name the circle as a symbol of a water drop, a single-storey building as the closest to nature, and a study of Icelandic soil structure.

What is convincing about this process is that the circle is not a first gesture; it is the survivor of several. Radial paths, nested rings and segmented plans all appear before the final half-round building and single water loop settle into place, which makes the eventual simplicity feel earned rather than assumed.

A Long White Wall on the Approach

Arriving by road, you see none of the drama. The building presents a long, flat, white front set low against mountains, with a band of glazing at ground level and a river glinting off to the side. It is a deliberately quiet face, closer to a horizon line than to a destination landmark, and it holds back the ring entirely.

Up close, that front becomes a perforated screen of angled white fins hovering over a fully glazed entrance. Through the glass, the landscape behind the building shows faintly, so the facade both conceals and hints. The lettering of H150 sits just inside the glass, a modest signal for a building that prefers to be discovered from its other side.

From the Steam Room, the Bathers Become the View

The view from the steam room is where the plan pays off. Beneath a timber ceiling and a row of slender slats, the room opens fully toward the water ring, a sandy edge and the river beyond. The ring runs across the frame like a horizontal band, with swimmers suspended in it at eye level, and the mountains stack behind. Rest and movement occupy the same picture: some visitors sit and look, others glide past inside the view.

From inside the ring, the relationship flips. The swimmer looks back at the curved building, its slatted canopy and its terraced seating, while the transparent channel wall puts the water and the grass on almost the same level. The ring is shallow enough in the drawings to read as a path you swim along, and that is its real innovation: bathing turned into a form of walking.

Where the Water Ring, the Hot River and the Trail Cross

The final view names the idea directly: an intersection of three ways, the water ring, the hot river and the trekking trail. The hikers on the hillside, the swimmers in the ring and the people in the river all occupy separate tracks that briefly converge at the building. The thermal center becomes a junction in the landscape, not an endpoint.

Seen at this scale, the half-cylinder recedes again, its glazed curve reflecting the valley. The geometry that looked rigid from the air now reads as a gentle frame for movement, setting up a place where existing paths are joined rather than replaced.

Why This Project Matters

Thermal bathing in Iceland already happens in open landscape, which makes any new bathhouse vulnerable to feeling like an unnecessary enclosure. H150 sidesteps that problem by treating the water itself as architecture: a ring that leaves the building, crosses the river and turns soaking into a journey. The building supports this quietly, presenting a restrained front to arrivals and saving its openness for the side that faces the water.

The lesson is about restraint and sequence. A single clear geometric move, tested through careful site sketches, ties a road, a river and a trail into one experience without erasing any of them. For anyone designing in sensitive natural settings, H150 is a reminder that the strongest intervention can be a line drawn lightly across the ground, as long as it gives people a new way to move through it.

View the Full Project

Project team

Designer: Mary AnikeevaStudio: Institute of Business and Design

Competition and award

Shortlisted, Thermal Blue

Location

Iceland

Enter a Design Competition on uni.xyz

uni.xyz runs architecture and design competitions year-round that reward proposals with spatial conviction and real site intelligence.