Dupont Circle, curved spa

The client commissioned us to renovate their main bathroom in their two story row house in Dupont Circle. They wanted to keep the layout but solve two problems; one was the little pool which was un-operable as a bathtub and was hard to make the step into, the second was more and aesthetic request, they wanted to get rid of the bulky 80’s look. In the requirements also were: accommodate a 15” flat panel TV. Walk-in shower with steam machine, two showerheads, shower seat. Our design proposal was to transform the sink-wall into a big soft curve, create the biggest shower enclosure possible, and explore the cabinet-entrance wall to acquire as much space as possible and explore the possibility to expose the brick on the shower wall. When we started the demolition, we found the concrete in the pool-shower full of moisture and disintegrating, so we decided to remove it and then the liner underneath was made out of two pieces and not even welded together! So we decided to remove it too, and so we end up demolishing everything until the sub floor. The biggest problem we found was with the steam room enclosure. The Steam Unit factory did the calculation to size the unit and gave us the guidelines for the space. The surprise was to discover that the recommended a tiled slope for the ceiling for the condensed water to drain was 4” per foot! Even dividing the space in two we had 2 feet and 8” slope! That ceiling will look as bulky as the existing bathroom… we thought. We knew we have to do something else. After a lot of frustration drafting options to try the ceiling to look nice, we asked the Steam Unit Company provider if glass would require a smaller slope. Well… -was the answer- glass is a lot smoother, so you just need ¼” per foot for the water to run. Eureka! Then the problem started with the Glass Company; how we’ll install a huge glass on the ceiling with cut outs for the showerheads and the light fixtures and make it look nice, after some head scratching we found a clean solution (see picture bellow). When we explored the sink side wall, we found lost of wasted space so we created part of the storage space in the gained space.