[.ca] Bathing Spaces: Designs for Pampering Body and Soul (ISBN 1564967174)

From Amazon.com:
For centuries, baths have been regarded as havens for rest and relaxation. From huge Roman ruins looming over hot springs to small wooden saunas dotting Finland's landscape to Japan's outdoor wooden soaking pools, baths, saunas, and spas have proven medicinal and spiritual value. Bathing Spaces celebrates the lasting traditions of the bath and beckons modern bathing areas to come out of their hidden spaces, since cutting-edge design is creating a "bathroom too chic to languish behind locked doors." Encouraging you to draw the bath and let it spill into larger areas, Bathing Spaces displays bathrooms as "second living rooms" where you no longer hop in the shower but rather lounge, meditate, and even exercise. Offering new ideas for creating the perfect spacious retreat away from the bustling world, lighting, faucets, tubs, tiles, and layouts are all explored. Bathing Spaces does not confine all of its designs to four walls but dares to venture outside. Outdoor baths, rooftop showers, and large windows in front of the bath incorporate nature into the bathing experience. Straying from the elements of design, the ancient tradition of the scented bath is also explored as well as the daunting task of cleaning the bathroom. With lush full-color photos and running narrative from Ali Hanan, Bathing Spaces will inspire you to transform your bathing area into a room that will pamper you body as well as your soul. --Jenny Burritt

worth every penny:
After doing extensive bathroom research for the past 9 months, I bought this book to see if any new ideas or images could inspire me to create a bathroom design for the University of Texas at Austin. I was astounded at the sensitivity of the writing and the images chosen. I would definately recommend this book to every designer who works with residential and commercial spaces. The ideas presented should be omnipresent in every bathroom, no matter if it is an office bathroom or a private residential suite.

Useless:
I wish I could join in with the others in their accolades of this book, but to me it was completely useless. Perhaps it's just that the style of the bathrooms (mostly modern and minimalist) doesn't appeal to me. I didn't find one that looked like any bathroom I'd ever seen. In fact, most had a distinctive European look. Pretty pictures, few words, and overall not one new idea did I cull from this book. Most definitely not worth my money.

New ideas for the private bathing space.:
BATHING SPACES is a book to get new ideas for the private bathing place and space. It shows different ways of bathing from traditional bathing rooms to bathes in big old houses and bahtign spaces in the naturre, with the inivitation to make available not the smallest but a larger room in the house. Their are bathes of silence, in bedrooms, designed with different materials - with wood and natural stone but also with frosted glass and stainless steel. Looking through all these inspring examples you can relax, look into the garden and get ideas for new sensual materials. There are not the typical furnitured bathrooms but real inspirations for a new feeling of bathing - quite inspiring.

Great ideas...less is more:
If you are looking for a book that discusses the best way to make use of a small space then this may be a book of interest. We have a small cottage that has been undergoing some major remodeling and changes, beginning with the bath, which was built in the 1800's and had an awesome old claw foot tub. We wanted space and a sense of cottage zen and this book helped. So many books on baths are over done or to cluttered. Less is more for us.

Bathrooms at their best:
This book is really wonderful. Some of the designs are not practical, but even so the book still serves as an inspiration. What I like best about it is the way Hanan encourages the reader to redefine their idea of a bathroom so it is not just a space for everyday tasks. I also like the way she incorporates ideas from many cultures. The photography is excellent. Even if you are not planning on designing a bathroom, this book is still fun to look at.