HOT SPRINGS GARDEN
Located within a Thermal Complex, Jardín de Aguas Termales is conceived as a sequence of experiences connected to the body, water, and silence. More than a utilitarian space, it is a ritual that proposes a slow, deliberate relationship with matter and time. The rectangular floor plan, with its orderly proportions, is divided into three main zones: to the north, the steam experience; to the south, water in its liquid state; and at the center, the spring, the origin and heart of the entire system.
The northern zone gathers a series of steam rooms arranged linearly, like individual thermal cells, enclosed within thick walls that retain heat. Preceding these rooms, an open-air pavilion acts as a threshold and transition between outside and inside: it contains cold plunge pools and showers, where the abrupt change in temperature activates the body. This pavilion also establishes an entry rhythm that brings order and pause to the experience.
At the southern end of the garden, a group of open-air thermal pools unfolds alongside the path of a natural rainwater channel. These lower-temperature pools are in direct contact with the site's endemic vegetation, allowing for a visual and sensory immersion in the landscape. The experience here is more expansive, open to the sky and surroundings.
The central point of the garden is the large thermal pool that contains the spring itself. Its geometry, conceived as an inverted pyramid, descends in concentric levels that invite the body to approach the water slowly. At its southern edge, a flotation pool overflows toward the center, marking the transition from the dense interior to the open exterior. On the northern side, an esplanade offers a space for rest, gathering, or contemplation. Its flat and generous surface allows this center to extend beyond the water and become a collective space, adaptable to different ways of being: meditation, yoga, silence.
The garden’s architecture is minimal but precise. The materials —pigmented plasters, gravel, local stones— are chosen to blend with the environment rather than stand out from it. There is no artifice: only planes, shadows, and paths that invite a slowing down, a conscious immersion in temperature, gravity, and sound.
Jardín de Aguas Termales is a choreography of heat and coolness, of emptiness and body. A place where water springs from the earth’s center and, in passing through it, one returns to oneself.
