C O N T E X T 9 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 7 23 The other consultants were chosen, notably Arup for structural, services, fire and water engineering expertise. The lighting designer was Speirs and Major, who had worked with Grimshaw at Paddington. Simons and his team working on the bid were desperate for an image for the scheme.We were equally desperate to tie down a brief, and have a client who could answer the technical requirements for a spa of this type. This led to the Blue Book design, a design strategy statement that could show an analysis of the site and a range of references for an impending design. These included a water wall (as at the Seville Expo) and the cubic form as a contemporary response to the purity of language of the classical architecture of Bath. Meanwhile, the search was on for an operator to partner the council; to provide the missing capital and act as operational client; and to respond to the architectural scheme that was developing. Again, the emphasis was to be on a contemporary approach. Henk Verschuur of Thermae in Holland was the clear winner. He was a man of quiet charisma who had almost single-handedly brought a spa culture to Holland and transformed the economy of the small town of Falkenberg. Although initially there was a divergence of vision between the clean mechanical aesthetic of Grimshaw and the softer, more organic one of Verschuur, the scheme continued to develop.The rigorous aesthetic of the cube became softened by the curves of the pools, giant columns and steam pods. Meantime the fate of the historic pools was entrusted to us. These were John Wood Younger’s masterful Hot Bath (the only public commission of either father or son), and the exquisite yet fragile and much-altered Cross Bath (the one building of the complex to house one of Bath’s three primary hot springs, and the result of considerable intrigue and extraordinary urban planning in the 18th century). Our task was to steer between a careful conservation approach, and a stoneand-glass aesthetic being developed by Grimshaw. Significant credit must be given to the council’s planners and the team from English Heritage. The critical problem was how to justify a modern building within the heart of a conservation area, attached to Grade I buildings and in the middle of the world heritage site. It was made clear from the start that only an exceptional design would suffice and that the supervision of the process would be extremely rigorous. In effect this meant that the team had the luxury of A careful conservation approach combines with Grimshaw’s stone-andglass aesthetic.
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