SPA – Hammam

SPA: Hammam is a wellness and bathhouse project designed by Mirah Samran in the Walled City of Lahore, Pakistan, set near the new Food Street within one of the most historic quarters of the city. The site sits in remarkable company: the famous Badshahi Mosque rises on its North-West side, while the Lahore Fort stands to the North-East. Both rank among the oldest and most iconic buildings of Lahore, built during the Mughal period, and they anchor the project within a layered urban and architectural memory.

The design returns to a building type with deep roots across South Asia and the wider Islamic world. A hammam is organized as a sequence of rooms that move the body gradually through changes of temperature, humidity, and light, and Samran treats that sequence as the heart of the spatial story. The aim is to design the hammam as a series of small pocket spaces with varying ceiling heights, so that the experience shifts and intensifies as a person moves toward the end of the journey.

Light as the Guide

Natural light becomes the main guide through the plan. A stark spot of daylight marks a climax point, a place of attraction, and from that bright center the light spreads out and grows steadily more dim. Artificial light is kept purely functional, which calls for more aperture spaces that let direct light strike a surface and scatter in all directions, leaving small gloomy spaces at the ends. This careful grading of brightness gives each room its own mood and turns simple movement into a measured ritual.

The circulation reflects the traditional bathing order. Moving from the reception, a visitor passes through the changing rooms and locker rooms and continues all the way to the steam room and the massage room. The male and female portions are kept separate from one another, a response to the privacy that a bathing program of this kind requires, while a café serves as the common space shared by everyone. By weaving daylight, threshold, and sequence together beside Lahore’s great Mughal monuments, the project offers a quiet, contemporary reading of an old and enduring ritual.