I wrote a post in 2024 arguing that there is a fourth space beyond home, work, and social gathering. I defined it as a solitary sanctuary — yours alone, for creative work and reflection.
I was half right.
There is a fourth space. But it is not defined by solitude. It is defined by shared passion.
The Three Spaces You Already Know
Ray Oldenburg gave us the framework in 1989. First space is home. Second space is work. Third space is the pub, the barbershop, the coffee shop — wherever community happens informally.
What these three spaces have in common: you end up in them by default.
You live where you can afford to live. You work where someone will pay you. You drink at the pub closest to your house. Geography and economics decide where your first, second, and third spaces are. The people in those spaces are determined by proximity, not by compatibility.
Your neighbors are not your tribe. Your coworkers are not your people. The regulars at the pub share a zip code, not a worldview.
This used to be fine. Before the internet, proximity was the only mechanism for finding community. You befriended whoever was nearby because you had no way to find anyone else.
Now you do.
What Changed
The internet gave us something unprecedented: the ability to find people who share our specific interests regardless of geography.
You care about thermal wellness and cold exposure? There are 200,000 people on Reddit who do too. You are obsessed with year-round growing in northern climates? There is a community for that. You want to build things with your hands instead of consuming content? Millions of people feel the same way.
Online, finding your people is trivial.
But here is the problem: finding them is not the same as gathering with them.
Eventbrite published a study showing that the vast majority of young adults want to explore their online interests in person. They discover passions digitally but crave physical community around those passions. The screen is where you find your people. The fourth space is where you actually meet them.
Third Places Serve Geography. Fourth Spaces Serve Passion.
This is the distinction that matters.
A third place gathers whoever lives nearby. The regulars at a coffee shop share a neighborhood. The crowd at a pub shares a commute radius. The congregation at a church shares a postal code.
A fourth space gathers people who share a specific passion — regardless of where they live.
| Space | Defined By | Who Shows Up | Why They Come |
|-------|-----------|-------------|---------------|
| 1st: Home | Economics | Family | Obligation |
| 2nd: Work | Employment | Colleagues | Income |
| 3rd: Pub/Church | Geography | Neighbors | Proximity |
| 4th: Passion Space | Shared interest | Your tribe | They care about the same thing |
The shift from third to fourth is a shift from passive to intentional community. You do not end up in a fourth space by default. You seek it out because something specific pulls you there.
A sauna is not a pub. Nobody stumbles in because it is on the way home. The people who show up on a Tuesday evening for a 180-degree session and an ice plunge — they are there because thermal wellness matters to them. They chose this. And because they chose it, the conversations are different. The relationships are different. The community is different.
Every Thiosphere Creates a Fourth Space
This is what I did not understand when I started designing modular structures. I thought I was building rooms. Saunas, offices, greenhouses, studios.
What I was actually building was gathering infrastructure for specific passions.
Saunosphere: The Thermal Tribe
When someone installs a Saunosphere in their backyard, a predictable sequence unfolds:
- They use it alone for a week
- They invite a friend
- The friend tells another friend
- Within a month, there is a regular group
The regular group is not random. It self-selects. The people who keep coming back are the ones who care about thermal wellness — the ones who have opinions about aufguss techniques, who track their cold plunge times, who read studies on heat shock proteins.
The Saunosphere did not create their interest. It gave their interest a physical home.
That group is a fourth space. Not defined by geography (they drive across town to get there), not defined by obligation (nobody has to come), defined purely by shared passion for a specific practice.
Agrosphere: The Growing Collective
Same pattern, different passion. An Agrosphere in a community garden or a shared backyard becomes a gathering point for people who care about growing food.
Not casual gardeners who forget to water their tomatoes. The people who show up in February to start seeds. The ones who geek out about soil microbiology and succession planting. The ones who trade heirloom varieties and argue about trellising methods.
The Agrosphere provides the climate-controlled environment. The shared passion provides the community.
Immosphere: The Analog Obsessives
Vinyl collectors. Board game groups. Tabletop RPG campaigns. Film screening clubs.
An Immosphere configured for immersive entertainment attracts a specific kind of person: someone who has chosen analog experience over digital convenience. Someone who cares enough about sound quality to listen to records, or about narrative depth to commit to a 6-month D&D campaign.
These people exist. They find each other online. They need somewhere to gather in person.
Ergosphere: The Deep Workers
Remote workers who actually want to work — not network, not socialize, not "collab." Focus. Depth. Silence.
A shared Ergosphere becomes a rotation of people who value concentrated effort. Writers on deadline. Programmers in flow state. Researchers who need four uninterrupted hours.
The shared passion here is focus itself. The fourth space is a room where everyone agrees: we are here to do real work.
Why This Matters More Than Architecture
I sell structures. But the value is not in the structure.
The value is in what the structure enables. And what a purpose-built structure enables — better than any converted spare room or rented community center — is a clear signal about what happens here.
A Saunosphere in a backyard says: thermal wellness happens here. That signal attracts the right people. A spare bedroom with a space heater says nothing. It attracts nobody.
A fourth space needs two things:
- A clear passion — what are we here for?
- A physical anchor — where do we gather?
The Thiosphere platform provides the anchor. The passion comes from you and the people you attract.
The Loneliness Problem, Solved Sideways
Everyone talks about the loneliness epidemic. The Surgeon General declared it a public health crisis. Social media was supposed to connect us. It connected us to content, not to people.
The direct solution — "go make friends" — does not work for adults. Adults form friendships through repeated, unplanned interaction around shared activities. That is Robert Putnam's research from Bowling Alone, and it holds up. You do not make friends by deciding to make friends. You make friends by showing up to the same place, for the same activity, with the same people, week after week.
Fourth spaces create exactly this condition. The same sauna group every Tuesday. The same growing collective every Saturday morning. The same game night every other Friday.
The friendship is a side effect of the shared passion. The structure is what makes the shared passion possible in physical space.
From Online Discovery to Physical Gathering
The internet solved the discovery problem. You can find your people anywhere in the world.
But the internet cannot solve the gathering problem. You cannot sauna over Zoom. You cannot pass seedlings through a screen. You cannot feel the weight of a vinyl record in a Discord channel.
The fourth space is the bridge. Digital discovery leads to physical gathering. The people you find online become the tribe you meet in person. The structure in your backyard becomes the anchor for a community that would never have formed through geography alone.
This is what Oldenburg could not have predicted in 1989. The third place was the best we had because proximity was the only community-formation mechanism available. Now that the internet has given us another mechanism — shared interest — we need spaces designed for it.
Not pubs. Not coffee shops. Not generic community centers.
Spaces built for specific passions. Spaces that signal what happens here and attract the people who care.
Build the Space, Find the Tribe
If you are reading this, you probably already have a passion that lacks a physical home.
Maybe you take cold plunges in a stock tank and wish you had a proper setup. Maybe you grow food on a windowsill and dream of year-round capacity. Maybe you host game nights in your living room and wish you had a dedicated space. Maybe you work from home and can never find real focus.
The passion exists. The community exists — scattered across subreddits and Discord servers and YouTube comment sections.
What is missing is the physical space where these people can gather in your neighborhood. The fourth space.
Build it, and your tribe will find you. Not because you advertised. Because the structure itself is the signal.
A Saunosphere in a backyard tells every thermal wellness enthusiast within driving distance: one of us lives here.
That is the fourth space. Not a place. A passion, made physical.
Configure your space — design the fourth space your passion needs.
Explore the product line — structures built for specific purposes.
Join the community — find your tribe before you build.