Chreli Abano is a historic sulfur bathhouse in Tbilisi's Abanotubani district, the quarter whose hot springs gave the city its name, and whose baths once received visitors including Pushkin and Alexandre Dumas. The 2016 restoration needed to bring daylight into the bathing halls without altering the building's silhouette, and every new element had to survive an interior that is permanently hot, humid and saturated with sulfur, conditions that attack ordinary aluminum finishes. The existing roof geometry was fixed, so the glazing had to follow the vaulting rather than the other way round.
Argo produced curved profiles for the glazed skylight domes, shaped to sit on the existing openings. Before powder coating, every profile used on the project was pre-anodized to improve protection in the sulfur-rich atmosphere. The upper sections of the domes were built to ventilate rather than seal, so hot air and vapour escape instead of condensing against the glass. Curved glass was formed to wrap the circular plunge pool inside its brick-vaulted chamber, and the coloured and stained glazing in the corridor ceilings was made by our own team.
The domes give the halls the light they were designed around: daylight falls from directly overhead onto stone, water and mosaic, and shifts through the day. Around the pool, the curved glass follows the circle exactly, so the enclosure reads as a single continuous surface set inside the herringbone brick vaults rather than as a partition dropped into a historic room. The stained glass adds colour to the corridors without competing with the original fabric.
Argo formed the aluminum profiles to follow the geometry of the existing domed roofs. Before powder coating, all aluminum profiles used on the project were pre-anodized to improve protection in the sulfur-rich environment. The upper dome sections were designed with ventilation paths so hot, humid air could escape. Argo also produced the colored and stained glazing for the patterned corridor ceiling and decorative windows.
