In the city of Mänttä, Finland, the extension of the Gösta Serlachius Contemporary Art Museum – designed by the architects Héctor Mendoza, Mara Partida, and Boris Bezan – was inaugurated in June 2014. In the south part of the park that surrounds the complex stands the museum’s new space, Art-Sauna, which is thought of as a walk that establishes a dialogue between art, nature, and architecture. The authors of this new construction integrated into the topography and landscape are the same architects who did the extension.

The cylindrical volume, combining striated concrete and wood, contains the sauna. The lounge zone is characterized by a roof with four timber vaults and a picture window 8 meters long framing the landscape horizontally. In the exterior, a large terrace opens out to the nearby lake, where one finds the Candela Table, designed in memory of the Spanish architect Félix Candela and built with prefabricated concrete pieces.