Archinect - News

New York City begins test pilot for parkbound modular public restrooms

2023-03-01T17:56:00-05:00

Nearly four years after floating the possibility, the city Department of Parks and Recreation is preparing for a trial run of prefabricated, kiosk-like bathrooms that cost a fraction of the multimillion-dollar price tag for building traditional restrooms. The modular bathrooms resemble curved newspaper kiosks, with slatted sides that are intended to provide needed privacy, but also enough sightlines to dissuade illicit behavior.

The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation says there will be one test toilet for each borough at a cost of $185,000 each. Five other “comfort stations” are also currently in the department’s construction pipeline. According to them, the new pilot is meant to “determine the feasibility of using this model in the future as an economical solution to building bathrooms in parks.”

The modular Portland Loo designs are a bit cheaper than the twenty JC Decaux-made facilities the city struggled to implement after signing a more expensive deal under the Bloomberg administration in 2006. Their presence, at a time when new chief public realm officer Ya-Ting Liu says she will move to make open streets and outdoor dining more permanent fixtures, is important also to the nearly 45,000 homeless people who live in the city.

If installed en masse, they'll join the new inventory of 5G towers cropping up around the city as the latest hallmarks of a changing streetscape remade by progressive d...

The NYC Parks Department wants to shrink public bathrooms to cut costs

2019-11-15T11:15:00-05:00

The Parks Department is looking to curb the cost of constructing new public bathrooms — by making them smaller...the agency is exploring stand-alone units tested in other cities, such as the Portland Loo and trailer-like bathrooms in Boston.

Following a $4.7 million comfort station at Ferry Point Park West and the prospect of a $6 million bathroom for another park on Staten Island, Mayor Bill de Blaisio vowed to address the rising costs to taxpayers, reports THE CITY. Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver has called the current phase an "exploration" to find "more inexpensive ways of building bathrooms."

Live In Your Sneakers? Mobile Housing's Next Step

2013-08-23T15:26:00-04:00

A new project, “Walking Shelter,” explores what on-the-go housing might just look like. Here, a portable dwelling is packed right into a pair of sneakers. Essentially a tent without a pole (that’s the clever part), the mobile home can be deployed anywhere you’d like it to pop up. Rather than relying on the old pole standard, the shelter’s frame is provided by the person(s) occupying it, explains Amelia Borg, one-eighth of Sibling, the Australian architectural collective behind the project.

HOTELLO. Somnia et Labora. A Portable Office

2013-03-22T19:08:00-04:00

Hotello is a portable space, packed into a trunk. Hotello contains all the necessary elements needed to work and rest. It consists of a metal structure that supports a translucent and sound absorbant curtain. Hotello can be combined and aggregated in different configurations.