We are an architect and a builder in Seattle. Aino Kivi draws the room around your home, your roof or your spa. Mikael Kuusi builds it in our Ballard shop and installs it himself. Nobody else touches it.
A sauna is the only room in the house you use with your eyes half shut, so the things that matter are small: the height of the upper bench, where the light falls, what the glass frames. Aino decides those before anyone mentions a heater.
Then Mikael works out how to build it so it still looks that way in twenty years, in a climate that is wet for eight months of the year.
Every one of the forty-one is on file with its drawings, heater and wood. Ask to see the ones closest to your house.
Vashon Island, 2024
A freestanding room at the far end of a meadow, set on screw piles so the grass grows right up to the deck. The whole south wall is glass, so the benches face the fruit trees instead of each other.
Capitol Hill, Seattle, 2025
Craned onto a fifth-floor roof in eleven prefabricated panels and bolted to the steel the engineer asked for. The floating benches hide the fixings and the light, so the room reads as one material.
Medina, 2023
A former guest bathroom turned into a sauna, a walk-in shower and a stone bench to cool down on. The glass between them runs floor to ceiling, so the spa reads as one room with two temperatures.
Bainbridge Island, 2022
The smallest room we have built, in the corner of a boathouse. We sank the heater into a niche beside the bench so two people can sit with their legs out, which in a six-foot room is the whole design.
Anatomy of a sauna
A photograph shows the finish. This drawing shows the rest: the parts you pay for and never see again once Mikael closes the wall. Choose a layer to read why it is built the way it is.
The layer nobody sees and the one that decides whether the room lasts. Every seam is lapped and taped before a single board goes on, and Mikael photographs it for your file, because once the cladding is up it can never be checked again.
Heat-treated aspen, run vertically so the eye goes up and the room feels taller than its 7 feet. The air gap behind lets the wall breathe and keeps the surface cool enough to lean on at 180°F.
The upper bench is set so your head sits about a foot and a half below the ceiling, where the heat is even and the löyly reaches you first. No screw heads on the top face, rounded front edges, and the lower bench doubles as a step.
No light at eye level and nothing overhead. A single warm strip under the upper bench washes the wall and floor, so the room is lit and the light source is never in your eyes.
Sized for the volume plus a correction for every square foot of glass, which loses heat faster than a wall. Set low and close to the floor so the heat moves around the whole room instead of pooling at the ceiling.
Dense, split stones that take water without cracking. We stack them loosely by hand so the air moves through, and come back once a year to restack them and replace the ones that have crumbled.
One wall of glass is usually the whole point of the room: the garden, the skyline, the rest of the spa. We place it opposite the benches, never behind them, so you look out and the heat stays at your back.
Every room we hand over comes with this drawing redone for your build, with the heater model, the stone weight and photographs of layer 01 before it was covered.
Prices include design, drawings, permits, the build and installation within 60 miles of Ballard. You get a fixed number in writing after the drawings, before you sign.
from$38,000
12 to 14 weeks, first visit to first fire
A freestanding pavilion on screw piles, so there is no slab to pour and nothing to dig up if you ever move it. Clad outside in charred cedar that turns silver in about three winters.
from$38,000
14 to 18 weeks, first visit to first fire
Built in our shop as panels light enough to crane up in one morning. We bring in a structural engineer before we draw anything; the report is usually $1,800 and is billed at cost.
from$52,000
14 to 16 weeks, first visit to first fire
A spa room in a basement, a spare bedroom or a bathroom you no longer use: sauna, shower and a place to sit and cool down. The price includes the tile, the drain and the extra ventilation.
Trained in Helsinki, spent nine years on houses and small public buildings in Seattle, and drew her first sauna for her own garden in Wallingford in 2013. The neighbours asked for the drawings, and she has not drawn much else since.
A finish carpenter for twenty-two years, the last twelve with Aino. He runs the shop in Ballard, builds every bench by hand, and is on site for every install, which is why we build three or four rooms a year and not forty.
Löyly is the Finnish word for the steam that rises when water hits the stones. It is the only Finnish word you need to learn.
Week 1
Aino and Mikael visit together, measure, check the power and the drainage, and ask where the sun is at seven in the evening. The visit is $450, credited to the design if you go ahead.
Weeks 2 to 4
Plan, sections and a model you can turn around on your phone. Two rounds of changes, then a fixed price for the build, in writing, before you commit to anything more.
Weeks 5 to 8
We file the permit set and order the timber. Thermo-aspen comes from one mill in Finland and takes about four weeks to reach Ballard.
Weeks 9 to 12
Walls, benches and ceiling are built as panels in our Ballard shop, where it is dry and nothing is rushed. You are welcome to come and sit on your bench before it leaves.
Weeks 13 to 14
Two to four days on site. On the last day we heat the room with you, show you how to use it and throw the first ladle of water together.
Sample review
We asked for a sauna and got the best room in the house. We sit in it in August with the door open, just to look at the garden through the glass.
A photo of the spot and a rough idea of how many people is plenty. Aino replies herself within two working days with a date for the site visit.