Forest Bathing

Forest Bathing

Description

From house to forest This project transforms the Casa del Marqués de Villora from a house into a forest of three ecosystems. The building becomes container rather than content — what matters is not what it once held, but the experience it now holds space for. In a world where contact with nature is increasingly scarce, and in a city where most people lack the time to pause and be present with their senses, this project creates a place in the middle of the city where both — contact with nature, and contact with oneself — become possible again. Shinrin-yoku and the Standard Sequence This practice is based on shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice that began in the 1980s as a government initiative, encouraging people to spend time in the forest in response to alarmingly high stress levels among the population. Amos Clifford later took this practice and adapted it into a more structured, Western methodology, which he calls the Standard Sequence. It structures a forest bathing walk into eight stages, forming what he calls an “optimal flow”: Intention, setting a clear purpose for the walk; the Threshold of Connection, a ceremonial gesture marking entry into the forest bath as a liminal state distinct from ordinary life; Embodied Awareness, at least fifteen minutes spent in one place, systematically opening each sense; Walking in Forest Time, twenty minutes of slow walking while noticing what is in motion around you; Infinite Possibilities, up to two hours in which the forest offers open-ended invitations — “the noun invites you to verb”; Sit Spot, twenty minutes of solitary stillness in a place that feels right; the Tea Ceremony, an unstructured shared moment that begins the transition back to ordinary life; and finally the Threshold of Incorporation, a second threshold that formally closes the walk. I have followed these eight steps, transforming them from a verbal, guided practice into architectural and physical form — spatial sequences, material atmospheres and sensory devices that the visitor moves through rather than is told about. Bringing it to Madrid I bring this practice one step closer still: to Madrid itself, by sensorially recreating three of the Community of Madrid’s own forest ecosystems — Ribera, Encinar and Melojar — so that forest bathing is no longer an imported practice, but one rooted in the landscape the visitor actually lives in. Each ecosystem is assigned to a floor of the building, corresponding to a stage of the Standard Sequence: the Ribera basement grounds the visitor in Walking in Forest Time; the Encinar ground floor opens the Threshold of Connection and Embodied Awareness; the Melojar first floor offers Infinite Possibilities; and the rooftop closes the sequence with the Sit Spot

Publication Date

2026

City

Madrid

Forest Bathing

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