The Cold Bath
The heart of Arctic Bath
At the centre of the floating ring sits the open cold bath, kept at around 4 °C the whole year. Around it are grouped three saunas, hot baths and a treatment room.
The whole houseArctic Bath
A floating spa hotel on the Lule River — with an open cold bath at its centre that drifts in summer and freezes into the ice in winter.
Arctic Bath sits on the Lule River near Harads, a village of around 500 people in the north of Swedish Lapland. The hotel is, quite literally, a structure on the water: a circular ring of stacked timber, inspired by the era of log-floating when felled trunks were sent downriver. In summer the building floats; in winter the river closes around it. At its centre is the open cold bath — ringed by three saunas, hot baths and a treatment room. It is a place built around bathing, warming and the stillness of the Arctic Circle.
The Build
A ring of stacked timber floating on the Lule älv — modelled on the image of a log jam. In winter it freezes fast in the ice.
The Rooms
Wood, water, nothing. The cabins around it have one window each, and it faces up.
The Table
Restaurant on the bank, Nordic cooking from the region. No claim to stars — the water is the point.
The Cut
- No fixed foundation — the house floats
- No heated bath: 4 °C, all year
- No access for day guests in winter
"Which is why the wrong people rarely sit at the next table."
Five reasons that stay
- The open cold bath at the centre of the ring, around 4 °C all year — warmth, plunge, rest, under northern lights or midnight sun.
- Architecture that tells of the region's log-floating history — floating free in summer, locked fast in winter.
- A floating restaurant cooking Norrbotten's wild larder — reindeer, moose, berries, fish — recognised with a MICHELIN Key.
What makes the house
A House That Floats and Freezes
Architecture on the Lule River
The floating part of Arctic Bath — the cold bath and six water cabins — was designed by architects Bertil Harström and Johan Kauppi.
The whole house
The Cabins
Six on the water, six on the shore
Arctic Bath has twelve cabins. Six float as water cabins for two near the shore, with private access over a footbridge and their own wooden decks above the river.
The whole houseArctic Bath lies near Harads, a village of around 500 people on the Lule River in Norrbotten, the northernmost part of Sweden. Luleå airport is about an hour and 15 minutes away, the railway station at Boden roughly 45 minutes. All around is the vastness of Swedish Lapland: forests, the river, long winters with northern lights and summers with the midnight sun. The region offers dog-sledding and snowmobile tours, ice fishing and hiking — and, with the neighbouring Treehotel, another well-known design project in the same village.
Arctic Bath is built around a simple idea: to place the Nordic bathing culture — hot and cold in alternation — in a setting of exceptional calm. The circular, floating architecture takes up the history of log-floating rather than hiding it, and the twelve cabins keep the place deliberately small. Wellness here is a rhythm of heat, cold, rest, good food and the landscape of the Arctic Circle.
The house, without words
No fixed foundation.
The open cold bath at the centre of the floating ring — around 4 °C all year round. Warm up in one of the three saunas, plunge into the cold water, then rest: the ritual the whole place is built around.
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