This bathhouse for conservative Jewish women in Mexico City features a stark composition of grainy white marble by local architecture firm Arqhe Studio.
Called Mikveh Oh, the building is a religious bath in Mexico City's Bosques de las Lomas neighbourhood. It is used by Orthodox Jews to clean themselves to obtain purity in accordance with their religious beliefs.

Local firm Arqhe Studio created the project with a stark design based on a minimal rectangular volume that conceals its very private happenings.
"In the Jewish faith the mikveh is a purifying bath," said Aby and Ramón Helfon of Arqhe. "This is achieved through the immersion in 'pure' water, in this case, rainwater."

The building's internal bath is filled with rainwater, as common in mikvehs, which is collected on a concrete slab on its flat roof and stored in two cisterns. No one can touch the water before it is used, and it can only come in contact with certain materials. "The tub?s water is rainwater, which must be collected naturally and can't be in contact with man or any material that isn't stone," the studio said.

The bathwater is not filtered but chlorine tablets can be used. All the pathways for the water are made of concrete as well, in observance with its restrictions.

For the bath to fill, water fills one cistern that then goes to the tub using a "communicating vessels system". Municipal water intervenes and is combined and purified with rainwater.

This water...