Saunas & cold plunges in Aïn Diab

On the corniche the Atlantic is thirty metres away and the wind carries salt onto everything. A cabin built here the way we build one inland will look tired in two years.

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Salt, and what it eats first

Fixings, first and always. Plated screws bleed rust down pale cladding within a season on this coast, so everything is A4 stainless, including the ones nobody sees. Then it takes glazing hardware, then any untreated timber end grain.

We specify a deeper ventilated cavity behind cladding, seal every end grain, and set plant back from the sea face wherever the layout allows.

Wind is a design constraint

The afternoon wind is constant and it strips heat from glass. We put the glass at right angles to the prevailing wind rather than facing it, shelter the plunge and the bench, and accept a smaller window in exchange for a room that is usable in the evening.

Beach clubs and hotels

The corniche is beach clubs and hotels, where the product is the photograph as much as the session. A sauna and plunge on a deck with the Atlantic behind sells a membership; it also has to survive a winter of storms, which is the part that is not in the photograph.

Questions