An eco-friendly community bath house with communal and private areas will be built in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Somewhere between a spa and a water park, Sun Baths will be a place of relaxation for the community, and has been designed from the ground up to improve both human health and the health of the environment.

Occupying approximately 12,000 sq ft (1,114 sq m), the building will include a large community bath space, enclosed sun deck, and an indoor group cycling space. There will also be a larger pool area for rest and relaxation.

Sun Baths will demonstrate that it is possible to achieve both exceptional comfort and environmental performance using smart design.

The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum and net-zero certified building will harvest its energy from solar panels on the roof and the heat of the cyclists, which will then be used to heat water for the pools, showers and sauna. It will also harvest most of the rainwater that falls on the roof for reuse.

Sun Baths owner and operator Peter Woolf, who has lived in the area for several years and has a background in chemical engineering, said that small technical improvements can yield tremendous improvements in performance.

“This building is truly one of the most extraordinary buildings that we’ve seen here in Ann Arbor,” resident Matt Grocoff, a consultant on the project, told members of the city’s Planning Commission.

Describing it as a building of the future, he also remarked that the property would allow for an urban agriculture component.

"In designing Sun Baths, we have put aside conventional wisdom about how buildings are constructed and operated," said Woolf. "We are breaking the building’s social, environmental and economic needs down to their atoms, and synthesising a new building-business organism based on current scientific and social data. Our hope is that the result will demonstrate that it is possible to create life giving spaces for both people and the environment."

With a US$3.5m (€3.3m, £2.7m) budget, construction is expected to begin in autumn 2017, with the opening the following year.

The project is being lead by Moving on Main LLC, with design by A3C Collaborative Architecture. Construction will be handled by Meadowlark Builders.