A sauna can have all the heat it needs and still leave people without a comfortable place to pause. That was the practical brief behind Sauna Zaježová by Guča arch.: the original sauna at an educational center in central Slovakia wasn’t comfortable enough, according to the architects. The response gives changing, cooling down, and resting their own places within a small building.
Completed in 2025, the roughly 269-square-foot building sits on the grounds of the Zaježová Educational Centre in Pliešovce. Its timber support structure rests on concrete footings, lifting the building above the sloping ground to avoid extensive earthworks. I like the straightforwardness of that decision. A retreat built around its surroundings shouldn’t have to rearrange the entire hillside first. Here, the ground continues underneath, and the architecture takes responsibility for making the levels work.
Designer: Guča arch.
The exterior’s inspiration is equally grounded: stacks of timber left to dry in the Slovak countryside. Those everyday arrangements use gaps between boards and a lightweight metal covering to allow air through while keeping rain off. Guča arch. borrows that visual logic for the sauna’s facade and roof. It’s an appealing reference because it belongs to the place, rather than looking imported from a luxury resort brochure. A humble woodpile turns out to offer plenty of architectural character.
That character comes from the construction itself. Repeated larch frames remain exposed outside, giving the facade depth and a readable rhythm. Panels fit between the frames, while large spruce boards finish the interior and also help brace the structure. The architects followed a direct design-build process, keeping the design closely connected to its execution. For me, the appeal is being able to understand the building without needing an elaborate explanation of what its surfaces are supposed to symbolize.
Inside, the plan divides into three principal spaces. A wooden platform brings visitors into a central vestibule, which serves as both changing area and junction. The compact sauna room occupies the lower section, while the larger resting space sits uphill, opening toward the trees through substantial glazing. The difference in proportions feels well judged: enclosure for the heated room, more space and a longer view for the time spent recovering afterward. Those rooms have different jobs, and their dimensions acknowledge it.
I’m particularly drawn to the decision to give the resting area such a generous share of the experience. In a building this small, that’s a meaningful allocation of space. It suggests that sitting still afterward deserves more than a spare bench squeezed beside the entrance. The forest view gives that pause a focus, too. You don’t need to be doing anything for the room to have a purpose.
Across from the entrance, an outdoor terrace holds a cooling tub and looks toward the forest. The elongated building also separates the center’s more public grounds from this quieter side, using its own footprint to establish a degree of privacy. That’s a useful piece of planning. Cooling off outside becomes part of a connected sequence, with the changing area linking the heated room, resting space, and terrace rather than treating each as an unrelated amenity.
None of this makes the project a template to copy directly into a backyard. Its form grows from this particular slope, the neighboring orchard and forest, and an educational center focused on ecology and personal development. The transferable idea is more modest, and more useful: decide how people will move through a place before getting distracted by how impressive the exterior might look.
There’s also a pleasingly practical footnote. The architects’ project description earmarks the original sauna for reuse as firewood storage. A building inspired by drying timber gains an actual wood store nearby, without requiring the old structure to disappear. I’d take that sensible continuity over a grand sustainability slogan. The project’s appeal lies in decisions of that scale: enough room to rest, a sheltered outdoor edge, and a hillside that doesn’t need to become a building pad.
