A chapter contributed to the Design-Build Studio Book, examining the work of Riga Technical University's International Summer School by Theo Molloy and Thomas Randall-Page.
It is one of the joys of working in a small town in rural Latvia that if you need something, you can pretty much guarantee that someone knows someone who can help. Such was the case when we decided we needed to find out more about the Latvian sauna tradition. The following afternoon the uniformed head of the local Latvian Sauna School arrived. The lady was thorough and strict and with the help of her assistant (a burly and stern man whose day job is a policeman in the town) demonstrated the various methods used to whip participants with fronds of oak or birch to exfoliate the skin during the sauna.
In a Latvian sauna, there is a strong focus on using the different plants and trees available in the forest as part of the experience. We were also lucky enough to have a visit from a local botanist, specialising in herbal medicines, who took us on a tour of the site telling the group what each plant could be used for. Where previously we saw the garden as filled with grass and some small flowers, we now understood it as a natural supermarket of available ingredients.
Meeting locals and building relationships, often through facinating meetings, adds a huge amount to the workshop. It is this network of relations that allows the projects to happen and be completed at such speed. It shows how if the process of designing does not engage with the people that use it, there is little hope the final structure will. This is how each year the group comes to understand that building is a social act and that the real context of any project is the people that use it.