pink steel wraps crystal forms
Along the Skelefte river in the north Swedenthis multi-faceted lithium crystal sauna captures the water, trees and recovery ground around it. Bigert & Bergström‘small pink The project is at the center of WasteLand, a climate action park built in the former Scharin industrial area, where contaminated land has been rehabilitated for seventeen years and opened as a public landscape for art, ecology and gathering.
The fully functional sauna is the permanent focus of the park, which opens in conjunction with Society Expo 2026 under the motto From Waste to Promise.
WasteLand is set on one of the region’s former contaminated industrial sites and brings climate research, public art and landscape repair to a site shaped by mining. The sauna is a symbol of the initiative by transforming a material related to the energy transition into a gathering place.
Bigert & Bergström Lithium Crystal Sauna Occupies WasteLand Climate Action Park | images © Jean Baptiste Béranger
a sauna that symbolizes the history of land mining
Based in Stockholm group at Bigert & Bergström shape the sauna as an asymmetrical lithium crystal, a reference that moves between technology and body. Lithium is found in batteries and power systems, and the same element has long been used in mental health treatment. Here, this double meaning becomes natural, contained in a sloping volume clad in rose titanium-coated stainless steel mirrors.
The sculpture takes shape with a steel structure wrapped in reflective panels that bend the surrounding river and forest on its surface. Inside, the mirror skin gives way to a warm wooden grotto lined with alder and heart pine, with flint and olivine stones around the heater. Copper, glass, LEDs, insulation and ventilation complete the technical level, allowing the project to function as a public sauna while maintaining its sculptural edge.
the public sauna is shaped like a lithium crystal and is clad in titanium-coated mirror pink steel
inside Sweden’s desert climate action park
Around the lithium crystal sauna, WasteLand gathers works that read Sweden’s landscape through cycles of repair, contamination and possible futures. Bigert & Bergström also present Rundgång in the park, while Broken Greenhouse brings climate scenarios to a series of sculptural greenhouse environments. Other projects use reclaimed trees, plants, seeds and play structures to build a wider public environment around the reclaimed land.
For Bigert & Bergström, the sauna continues a practice that often makes climate and social questions physical. Their previous Solar Egg brought a communal sauna to Kiruna, where mining forced the town to relocate.
In Skellefteå, the lithium crystal sauna carries a similar charge in a different landscape. Its mirrored shell reflects a site still in transition, while the heat inside transforms the artwork into a communal room, where energy, extraction and public ritual meet on a human scale.
the multifaceted exterior reflects the recovering industrial landscape around it
inside, alder and heart pine form a warm wooden cave inside the mirrored steel shell
The hexagonal seat mirrors the multifaceted exterior
