LIFE-ENHANCER OF THE YEAR PUUSAUNA

Finnish architect and wood aficionado Jaakko Torvinen was sitting in a Helsinki park with a friend one summer evening in 2023 when a man came up to him and asked if he was the designer of the city's Pikku-Finlandia, a beautifully quirky all-wood space built in 2022 as a temporary replacement to host events while Alvar Aalto's Finlandia Hall (winner of a Design Award last year) was being restored.

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Torvinen nodded, and the man told him he had come across the project online that very day. He said, 'I want you to design a sauna for me,' and rushed off.

Fast forward two years, and Torvinen has just completed said sauna, a short walk from the client's summer house on Kaunissaari, an island in the outer Finnish archipelago, four hours by car and ferry from Helsinki.

Torvinen had never heard of the island in question before embarking on the project, but he says the pine forests, dramatic boulders and sandy beaches of this former fishing village captured his imagination.