Facility Layout

The 15,000 sq ft build

A schematic floor plan organized as the three layers — outer (tea house), inner (bathhouse), secret (retreat) — so a guest moves from public warmth toward deepening quiet. Sketch only: room adjacencies and program, not construction drawings.

15k sf is tight for all three layers. The Submersive pitch (this concept's template) spent its entire 15k sf on the bathhouse alone — 5.5k of it on back-of-house, 4.4k on bathrooms/lockers — with no tea house and no retreat. Fitting a 5k tea house and a retreat hall and the full wet program into the same 15k forces every zone below benchmark (note the squeezed BOH below). A realistic build for all three layers likely runs 18–24k sf; the plan below keeps the brief's 15k target so the trade-offs are visible. Only the tea house (~5k), bathroom/lockers (~2k), and the bathing program (2 saunas, 3 steam, 3 hot baths, 1 pool, 3 cold plunges) come from the brief; the rest is placeholder for an architect.

外  Outer · Tea House 内  Inner · Bathhouse 密  Secret · Retreat Entry · Reception · Retail Tea House ~5,000 sf · seating, food & tea service conversation, reading, working, contemplation Kitchen tea + food prep Genkan shoe / threshold Bathrooms & Lockers ~2,000 sf · changing, robes, day storage Robe Lounge (tea & baths overlap) robes, snacks, social recharge between soaks Main Pool 1 warm pool Hot 1 Hot 2 Hot 3 Plunge 1 Sauna 1 Sauna 2 Steam 1 Steam 2 Steam 3 Cold Plunge 2 Cold Plunge 3 Workshop / Practice Hall meditation, trainings, ceremony flexible, quiet container Rest nap / integration Garden outdoor quiet Back of House mechanical, water treatment, laundry, staff
Hot bath Cold plunge / pool Sauna Steam Program space

外 · Outer

Public · Tea House
  • Entry, reception & retail
  • Tea house (~5,000 sf)
  • Kitchen & tea service
  • Bathrooms & lockers (~2,000 sf)

内 · Inner

Guests · Bathhouse
  • Robe lounge (tea/baths overlap)
  • 1 main pool
  • 3 hot baths · 2 saunas
  • 3 steam rooms · 3 cold plunges

密 · Secret

Invitation · Retreat
  • Workshop / practice hall
  • Rest & integration
  • Private garden
  • Back of house & mechanical
Program areaHot Water (sf)Submersive 15k (sf)Source / note
Tea House5,000—brief — Submersive has none
Bathhouse (wet hall + baths)4,500~3,400placeholder
Bathrooms / Lockers2,0004,400brief figure is half the benchmark
Retreat / Workshop1,800—placeholder — Submersive has none
Reception / Retail1,0001,100placeholder
Back of House7005,500placeholder — almost certainly too small
Relaxation / interstitial—2,300folded into other zones here
Total15,000~16,700

Side-by-side with the Submersive template makes the squeeze explicit: they used ~16.7k sf on the bathhouse alone (heavy on BOH and lockers), while this plan asks 15k to also hold a tea house and a retreat. Back-of-house for pools, saunas, and water treatment realistically needs several thousand sf, not 700. Read this as: either grow the footprint (~18–24k) or shrink the tea-house/retreat ambitions.