Therme Group

Social Sauna is back 📖

Swipe through for 5 things to learn about sauna culture, according to co-author Jane Withers.

Social Sauna returns with a fresh look at one of the world’s oldest communal traditions, and why it’s finding new relevance today.

Edited by Jane Withers and Ria Hawthorn, published by Therme Group, the book traces sauna’s journey from ancient ritual to a modern space for connection, culture, and design.

This edition also includes a new introduction by Robert Hanea, Founder & CEO of Therme Group, and a new afterword by Robert Hammond (Robert Hammond) of Therme Group, alongside the original research from Jane Withers and Ria Hawthorn.

📚 Grab a copy at your local bookstore, or at the link in bio.

The future of wellbeing is taking shape in Singapore. Therme Singapore has officially broken ground, bringing together nature, water, and culture to create a transformative urban wellbeing destination where people can reconnect with themselves, others, and nature.

A new kind of destination is making its way to Singapore.

Today, we celebrate the groundbreaking of Therme Singapore — Asia’s first large-scale integrated urban wellbeing destination, set to open at Marina South in 2030. Nestled beside Gardens by the Bay, this seven-storey sanctuary spanning over 720,000 sq ft will bring together thermal pools, water slides, tropical gardens, and wellbeing treatments — a shared space for millions to play, relax, and restore.

Impact:
🔸 720,000+ sq ft across 7 levels
🔸 20+ pools and water attractions
🔸 18 waterslides stretching 1.8km combined
🔸 70+ wellness treatment rooms
🔸 200,000+ plants, 200+ species
🔸 2M+ annual visitors expected
🔸 400 jobs created

The Romans understood something we are only beginning to remember: places where people gather to care for their bodies, their minds, and one another are not a luxury. They are infrastructure, as essential to a functioning society as roads, water, or libraries.

By the 4th century AD, Rome had 856 neighborhood baths and 11 grand imperial complexes for a city of one million. Entry cost a quadrans, a quarter of the smallest Roman coin. Children entered free. The richest and poorest citizens used the same pools.

These were never only about bathing. Inside, you’d find libraries, lecture halls, art galleries, gardens, gymnasia, and food halls. The historian Fikret Yegül called them “a microcosm of Roman public life.”

The bath was the single most widely diffused piece of Roman civic architecture across the empire, from Britain to North Africa. Wherever Rome went, it built places for people to gather.

What would it mean to make that same commitment today?

This is the first post in Bathing as Social Infrastructure, a historical companion to , our ongoing series on delivering this same today.

Sources: Fikret Yegül, Bathing in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity (MIT Press, 1992).