Acqua Muro is a refugee safehouse and recreational bathhouse in Rome for incoming or current Romans. Taking from two common elements of Rome, the water (acqua) and the wall (muro), Acqua Muro imagines how different members of Rome’s social ecosystem can intersect in play, privacy, and protection.

Involving three separate programs: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Asylum, the program distribution, much like the experience of bathing, is linear and processional. Consequently, the form of each building is bar shaped, inspired by the linear routine of bathing. Entering, unpeeling, bathing, and changing reveals intimate moments of closure and exposure, which calls for insular filters of walls and sculptural forms of water that protect and orchestrate contact within each mass.

Each building houses locals, tourists, or refugees, and each occupant comes to the center with a tangible privilege to choose, by entering, unpeeling, and being vulnerable; both in the baths and in society. The act of bathing is a physical example of the exchanged trust that Italian citizens have in their social enclaves, and this fluid process gives control to the visitor to choose their range of vulnerability and exposure to a new space they’re adjusting to.