About two years ago I was standing in the shower and had a vision of a sailboat turned unto a sauna. When I got out and dried off I started drawing plans. It felt like it was what I should be doing, so I just kept building it until it was done. The boat was originally called the Sea Mystic, we painted a “T” and an “M” in the name to make it Steam Mystic (my brother’s idea).
I live in Victoria BC and love designing and building things like saunas, tiny homes, surfboards, small shops. For me, it’s about more creative designs, more diversity in the world, more mystery. I like to follow my gut when it comes to design; there is an emotion that I’m trying to bring to life. Sometimes my hands can capture what I feel, and what I dream for the world; sometimes they can’t.
–Nick
Nicolas Joel Van Buren
Ontological Creative
Victoria BC, Canada
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
Wow! This is why we work. Incredibly beautiful and totally has emotion, as much as any fine art painting. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for making it!
I remember a story I was told many years ago about a man who built a dry sauna on a floating platform. The platform was anchored and the builder got killed by the anchore rope. He would dive into the water or jump or whatever after using the sauna. Perhaps a bathing ladder and some special gearing would be wise. This was about 28 years ago in a harbor on a Puget Sound Island. Lopez Island if I remember. I could not tell if there was a bathing ladder from the picture.
Better safe than sorry.