Teurastamo

This guide to Teurastamo in Helsinki opens with the hiss of a workers' sauna that closed out every shift in this red-brick abattoir for decades after it opened in 1933. It follows architect Bertel Liljequist's five slaughterhouse halls, the daily trade in meat that ran through them, and the old Finnish idea that a sauna is a threshold to be treated almost like a church. The sauna, built to hold eight men at a time, was the one warm, private ritual that belonged to the workers alone.