A Designer Builds a Scandinavian-Inspired Sauna That Floats Off the Maine Coast

Brendan Ravenhill likes to describe his summers in Maine as half vacation, half working meditation. Most of the year, he’s in Los Angeles, where his design studio is primarily known for lighting fixtures. But when he returns to his family’s homestead on Little Cranberry Island, a short boat ride southeast of Acadia National Park, he tends to personal projects: building wooden boats, a pondside tea house, and, over the course of three months last year, a floating sauna.

Brendan’s sister-in-law, Katie Garrison, had the idea first, after seeing similar saunas while traveling for work in Norway. Next, his sister, Amanda, helped jump-start the project by securing three crucial items, all for free: an old pine-board finger float for the base; a mooring in the local harbor; and a never-used, wood-burning sauna stove that a neighbor, now an accomplished jeweler, welded in 1979 for a continuing education class.

"This was a very free project that allowed me to explore my deep love of vernacular architecture."

—Brendan Ravenhill, resident and designer