Kaya Bathhouse: wayfinding for people without glasses
Colour and shape before words: signs for a steamy, six-floor water tower where nobody is wearing glasses.
- Services
- Architecture, Branding
- Year
- 2026
- Lead
- Aiko Tanaka
- Read
- 4 min
Kaya is a public bathhouse in a restored nineteenth-century water tower. It has three pools, two saunas, a steam room and a café, spread over six floors connected by a narrow spiral staircase. When it reopened after a long renovation, the architects had done a remarkable job with the building. But visitors kept getting lost, usually in a towel, usually without their glasses.
We were asked to design the wayfinding: every sign, number and symbol in the building.