Communal Bodies is building spaces for collective wellbeing and connection.

We develop communal environments designed to support social connection, regulation, and restoration—across bathhouses, recovery spaces, and future models for collective care.

Bathhouses are our first and most established expression.

Indoor vintage swimming pool with ornate ceiling, decorative wall, and water feature with three small lights above.

About Communal Bodies

Founded by Mary Minas, Communal Bodies operates at the intersection of place, ritual, and long-term care. Our work is grounded in the belief that certain spaces function as cultural infrastructure: shaping how people regulate, recover, and relate to one another over time.

Bathhouses offer a proven starting point.

About the founder

A woman sitting in a hot spring or steam bath, surrounded by rocks and plants, with mist or steam rising around her.

Why Bathhouses

Across cultures and centuries, bathhouses have operated as civic spaces for shared care—supporting physical restoration, emotional regulation, and social connection without performance.

In a contemporary context, they answer a growing need for:

Non-transactional communal space
Ritualised rest embedded in daily life
Architecture that supports wellbeing through use, not spectacle

For us, bathhouses represent a model that is culturally grounded, economically resilient, growing in market share, and capable of anchoring broader ecosystems of care.

A white building with brick accents and a gray drainpipe. Two small barred windows, one above the other, with some damage to the wall and bricks exposed.

What We Develop

We develop bathhouses as destinations, and our long term vision is for this to grow into other spaces of care and rest.

Each project is site-specific and shaped by:

Local traditions and climate
The architectural and material conditions of the building or land
Contemporary patterns of work, stress, and recovery

Rather than applying a fixed template, we work with the character of each site to develop spaces that feel inevitable to their context—quietly distinctive, materially grounded, and built to endure.

Interior room with a wooden table, floating shelves on a white wall, and yellow ceiling accents. The room has brown wooden panels and a concrete floor.

Our development work is informed by an active advisory practice with hotels, wellness venues, and design teams internationally.

This proximity to real-world operations allows ideas to be tested, refined, and grounded—bringing clarity, rigour, and realism into everything we build.

Advisory

Advisory Services

Who We Work With

Interior view of a brick building with a modern metal bridge and a glass ceiling structure overhead.

Communal Bodies partners with heritage and cultural developers, private landowners and family offices, hospitality groups seeking depth, and public or cultural institutions with a long-term mandate.

We work across development partnerships, joint ventures, and long-term leases, prioritising alignment over scale—patience, quality, and care as lasting infrastructure.

If you are stewarding a site or long-term asset where communal wellbeing could play a meaningful role, we welcome thoughtful conversations. Communal Bodies engages selectively, with a focus on work built to endure.

Work With Us

Interior of a room with white textured walls, arched openings, and a stone central column. Wooden buckets are on the floor, with a small wooden table holding a few items in the back.

Communal Bodies