The design approach also references “Learning From Las Vegas”, in which the “duck”, casino, speed, and vulgar extravaganza resonate within 21st-century cultures of entertainment and health urbanism. The third-place architecture of pleasure builds upon the Chinese Bath Palace typology that provides everyday health maintenance to cure ills and fulfill desires. The Bath Palace typology emerged from public bathhouse in Mainland China in the late 90s; it has now become an all-in-one space with spaces for activities from dining to massaging, from after hour deal-making to even under-cover sex trades. The new Macau Waterfront Bath Palace design appropriates the Neo-Baroque quality of the original Chinese Bath Palace as a critical mechanism to expand the urban imaginary between vulgarity and pleasure by promoting design strategies that become available given greater infrastructural autonomy. The formal structure and programmatic drive of the Bath Palace start from a metaphorical and figurative heart that morphs into the heart of the city where the exchange of fluids and sensations are compressed and animated.

AN ALL-IN-ONE SPACE

The Bath Palace sits on site A; it manages the traffic of the Ponte De Amizade bridge with an imaginative newly constructed interchange that connects the Amizade Bridge to road networks of other key geopolitical spaces.

The building promotes daily activities in the city by wrapping up the grey spaces under the highway bridges; this is the space where people walk dogs, make trades, and enjoy a roof over their heads. The autonomous vehicles move into the building quickly, that speed compresses the sense of scale. Many merchandises and arts such as the Chinese screen dividers (the screens are spatial elements of ambiguity) are showcased on the walls. The building has a vehicle shelfing system that manages the cars, a docking system that manages the boats, a variety of restaurants and pubs to have conversations, and a bath palace that serves as the city’s low-key health infrastructure that utilizes spa, massage, and relaxation to cure minor physical and mental discomfort. This Bath Palace is the architectural response to the new urbanism under Macau’s context, the new highway culture evolves around this all-in-one space.

This Bath Palace Transportation Hub offers a new third-space city lounge that is not a casino, the construction of the Gangzhuao (HK-Mainland-Macau) Bridge will bring more vehicle traffic to Macau, this design thinks forward and takes on the mission of challenging new transportation method, which will be a great opportunity to change Macau’s failing connections to its people.