Tummo

Sauna club, café, and restaurant on Mindaugo Street, Vilnius

In a former warehouse-type building at one of the “Tech Zity” locations – “Tech Loft” – a new urban space focused on well-being and everyday health-oriented habits has been established through the joint efforts of A2SM and Mantas Peteraitis Architecture Studio: a restaurant and sauna club. In designing the building’s new exterior and interior “garment,” special attention was paid to details whose combined effect not only programs a pleasant, warming visitor experience, but also encourages the formation of a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle throughout the entire quarter.

The conversion project, which creates a new axis between Algirdo and Mindaugo streets, is particularly significant for the surrounding area, as it opens up a formerly closed block that, in transforming from industrial use, gains functional diversity, comes back to life, and becomes attractive to city residents and visitors alike.

When shaping the building’s grey-toned exterior, A2SM architects emphasized a clear, legible volume, highlighting a key element – a transparent, glowing opening on the main façade that invites passersby in from the street. For the façade expression and window screening, ceiling boards from the former Lelija factory were reused; once charred, they created a new façade identity that changes with the light. A landscaped terrace is being developed, introducing greenery into a car-dominated quarter. A more private sauna courtyard is formed within a cradle of planting, where visitors are invited to refresh themselves in a cold-water pool.

In designing the interior, architect Mantas Peteraitis considered tactility and the reuse of high-quality materials to be the core values. Most solutions are ecological and natural, such as floors impregnated with linseed oil and walls finished with lime plaster. The interior is dominated by stone, wood, textiles, and concrete. Important sculptural accents include distinctive relief wooden panels and a stained-glass artwork preserved through the architect’s personal efforts, which was salvaged from a demolished building in Klaipėda and brought into this interior.

The interior spaces create a timeless, immersive, and intriguing atmosphere that invites visitors to sink into a slow, attentive state of being here and now.

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