ABSTRACT
The ways to be public are at once contextually specific, and perhaps prototypical, able to be adapted to foreign circumstances. On a radically different scale to that of Sina's Cafe are the redevelopments of the Sabarmati Waterfront in Ahmedabad, in the north-west Indian state of Gujarat. Ahmedabad has grown up along the banks of the Sabarmati River. The expansion of Ahmedabad to a population of more than 6 million today pressed the city's marginalised inhabitants to the fringes, in particular to the banks of the Sabarmati. A project on such a scale as the Sabarmati Waterfront undeniably requires expert skills and training. The Kulttuurisauna, or 'Culture Sauna', is a new public sauna in the Kallio neighbourhood of Helsinki. Social space in the Kulttuurisauna is produced through personal manipulation, as if the mere presence of the architecture cannot be trusted to achieve it alone.
