Archinect - News

Samuel Ross unveils Brutalism-inspired Kohler smart toilet concept for Milan Design Week

2024-04-02T12:59:00-04:00

Designer Samuel Ross has shared a preview of the new Formation 02, his first smart toilet concept for Kohler, ahead of the opening of this year’s Milan Design Week on April 16th.

The piece is inspired by Brutalist architecture and will retail for $25,000. The brand is marketing his creation as an inspired demarcation from the traditional silhouettes used in its Eir Smart Toilet line.

Ross sees it as a sculptural enhancement of a necessity intended for use in a variety of settings he describes as capable of delivering "democratic, open, public experiences."

Image courtesy Kohler Co.

His design intentions were so described via a scrollable digital 'Manifesto' relating Ross and his studio SR_A’s philosophy and new model for water solutions. This adds to Ross’ longstanding creative relationship with Kohler, which includes the Formation 01 faucets the new product, rendered Haptic Orange, serves to compliment.

Image courtesy Kohler Co.

"Our objective goes beyond function — it’s closer to v...

PAO creates Beijing public restroom from single meandering wall

2023-06-30T11:19:00-04:00

People’s Architecture Office (PAO) has completed a public restroom in Beijing shaped by a single meandering wall. Named Amoeba Public Restroom, the project is located in Manshan Park, a popular destination in Mentougou, Beijing known for its markets, exhibitions, and music performances.

Image credit: People's Architecture Office

“Amoeba Public Restroom is an all-gender facility that is designed to [be] welcoming for all people,” the team explains. “The design features a single meandering wall, which creates distinct individual stalls while maintaining an open and interconnected interior. Conical spaces form light wells that draw natural light into each stall. The resulting spaces bring a sacred beauty to the most profane of activities.”

Image credit: People's Architecture Office

Each stall within the scheme has a unique shape and size. Stall doors do not seal above or below to create a continuity of sp...

Marc Newson unveils the final Tokyo Toilet project design

2023-01-25T13:44:00-05:00

World-renowned Australian industrial designer Marc Newson has revealed his contribution to the Nippon Foundation’s ongoing The Tokyo Toilet public design project.

Located in the capital’s tourist-heavy Shibuya ward, the Urasando toilet completes the project’s offering of 17 facilities placed across the commercial district beginning in 2020.

Photo: Satoshi Nagare, courtesy of The Nippon Foundation

The design for the public restroom was inspired by elements central to vernacular Japanese architecture. Using a copper Minoko roof common to tea rooms, shrines, and other rural spaces, the concrete structure’s form engenders a “subconscious feeling of comfort and peacefulness” while providing users with an accessible facility whose material selection will, over time, help it blend into the urban fabric of the neighborhood.

Photo: Satoshi Nagare, courtesy of The Nippon Foundation

As Newson explains: “It is important to me that the Toilet feels trustworthy and honest inside and out: The bright...

New Yorkers can’t wait any longer for the installation of long-promised public toilets

2022-03-31T16:42:00-04:00

As public bathrooms continue to be one of the rarest commodities in the city, the Adams administration has not provided a timeline or any details for the installation of 15 automatic sidewalk toilets unused for more than a decade. But only five of the toilets have been installed and the city has struggled to find suitable new spots. For years, the others remained mothballed in a Queens warehouse but city officials declined to detail where they are currently located.

The toilets are a holdover of the Bloomberg administration, which signed a franchising agreement with Cemusa (later JC Decaux) in 2006 that was supposed to provide 20 such facilities at a cost of around $500,000 apiece. Recently, the city declared it will not force dining establishments to offer their restrooms to the public after an update to pertaining sections of its building code.

The issue has as much to do with providing what many recognize to be vital pieces of public infrastructure as it does with serving the city’s roughly 45,000-strong homeless population, which has been the target of recent Adams administration efforts to restore a sense of safety in the wake of an alarming two-year spike in crime. Critics, for their part, see it as part of a larger effort to “criminalize” homelessness, charging that the lack of facilities denies everyone a “basic human need.”

“It is not only a sanitation issue but also a public safety and civil rights issue,” Councilmember Sandy Nurse ...

Japanese fashion designer Nigo creates house-shaped public toilet for Tokyo Toilet project

2021-07-16T12:22:00-04:00

Japanese fashion designer Nigo, the man behind the popular clothing brand, A Bathing Ape, has designed a public toilet that takes the shape of a small home as part of the Tokyo Toilet project.

The toilet is located in the Harajuku district within central Tokyo, which is the region of the city that Nigo is originally from. Modest and dainty, it was envisioned to starkly contrast the surrounding high-rise, urban environment.

“First and foremost, I thought about its accessibility and ease of use,” said Nigo. “In contrast to the ever-changing city of Tokyo with its sky-high buildings, I envisioned a toilet that feels like a good old home that stands quietly on a corner of Harajuku. The toilet may feel nostalgic to some and new to others, depending on their age and generation.”

The inspiration for the toilet’s design derives from the Washington Heights Dependent Housing complex, which was a large housing development built in the area by United States Armed Forces in 1946 following Worl...

How the Toilet Can Be an Icon of Social Justice, Sustainability, and Wellness

2021-03-08T18:10:00-05:00

Located at the intersection of sculpture and architecture, TOLO's XYYXXY Accessible Restroom is designed as a counterpoint to the “normative” bathroom. The plan takes the shape of a disfigured cross with a “non-gendered” toilet or urinal stall located at the end of each spoke. The impetus for the project was North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” HB2, which sought to restrict the bathroom transgender people can use. XYYXXY emblematizes the cultural issues at play in these so-called “Potty Laws,” as well as other historic civil rights laws, that have sought to define how restrooms are designed and used.

Join us as we talk to the designers of the XYYXXY Accessible Restroom, TOLO Architecture partners Sarah Lorenzen and Peter Tolkin, for a presentation and discussion Monday, March 15th, from 1-2 pm EST / 10-11 am PST, looking at the potential of the toilet.

To RSVP for this virtual panel, please click the "reserve" button at this link. Space is limited and registration is required to attend....

Tadao Ando completes slick public restroom design for The Tokyo Toilet project

2020-09-14T13:51:00-04:00

THE TOKYO TOILET, an initiative launched by the non-profit The Nippon Foundation to create save, clean, and appealing public restrooms throughout Tokyo's Shibuya ward, just completed its latest facility: Jingu-Dori Park, designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Tadao Ando, features a simple, functional layout realized in the architect's trademark elegant and minimalist formal language.

Photo: Satoshi Nagare.

Five of the 17 planned restroom facilities, designed by Shigeru Ban, Fumihiko Maki, Masamichi Katayama/Wonderwall, and Nao Tamura, already opened to the public earlier this summer while more are expected to launch in 2021, including toilets created by Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, and Sou Fujimoto.

Photo: Satoshi Nagare.

"I sought for this small architecture to exceed the boundaries of a public toilet to become a 'place' in the urban landscape that provides immense public value," Tadao Ando describes his concept. "Using this clear and simple reasoning for the concept of this structure, I chose...

The Tokyo Toilet Project: Pritzker Prize winners Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito, and Fumihiko Maki among designers of new public restrooms

2020-08-17T14:36:00-04:00

Noteworthy Japanese architects, and even some Pritzker Prize laureates, are among the creators of 17 innovative public restroom designs throughout the bustling Shibuya area of Tokyo. Launched by the non-profit The Nippon Foundation, THE TOKYO TOILET project hopes to create save, clean, and appealing facilities "to make them accessible for everyone regardless of gender, age, or disability, to demonstrate the possibilities of an inclusive society."

Five of the 17 planned facilities, envisioned by Shigeru Ban, Fumihiko Maki, Masamichi Katayama/Wonderwall, and Nao Tamura, have recently opened to the public while more are expected to launch later this year and in 2021.

The Tadao Ando-designed restroom is scheduled to open on September 7th. Toilets created by Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, and Sou Fujimoto will be available next year.

Take a look at the initiative's first five releases below.

Designer: Shigeru Ban

Project description: "There are two things we worry about when entering a public r...

m2.senos creates a public restroom coated in green ceramic tile for a cemetery in Portugal

2017-10-26T14:32:00-04:00

The very first public toilets were introduced in 1851 in London’s Crystal Palace. George Jennings, a Brighton plumber, installed what he referred to as 'Monkey Closets' in the Retiring Rooms of the glass-and-iron hall for the Great Exhibition, where over 827,280 visitors paid a pretty penny to receive a clean seat, a towel, a comb, and a shoe shine. After the success of Jennings' lavatory, public restrooms began to appear in the streets and are today ubiquitous despite becoming a political battleground for civil rights, and facing persecution all over America, and beyond.

One might not naturally think of the restroom as a central design element, but the humble bathroom has been shaping the spaces we occupy since Jennings' Hyde Park innovation. For instance, toilets are one of the first elements drawn in the plans for high-rise buildings before tenant's needs are worked out. Beyond the functional, restrooms can be quite beautiful as well from the resid...

The Guggenheim will install a fully functioning solid gold toilet

2016-04-20T22:17:00-04:00

... instead of its standard Kohler toilet, it will have a solid 18-karat-gold working replica of one, a preposterously scatological apotheosis of wealth whose form is completed in its function: You could go into the restroom just to bask in its glow, Mr. Cattelan said, but it becomes an artwork only with someone sitting on it or standing over it, answering nature’s call.

Maurizio Cattelan, an Italian artist who famously retired five years ago, has returned with a solid gold (and fully functioning) toilet for the Guggenheim Museum. Perfectly paired with the late Tobias Wong's Gold Pills.

This Nano Membrane Toilet could solve the world's sanitation crisis – and charge our phones

2016-01-05T14:44:00-05:00

Researchers at Cranfield University in the UK have created a prototype of a toilet that works without being connected to water or sewage systems, and that can generate electricity and clean water as it composts waste. [...] The Nano Membrane Toilet, which has been developed with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would be a kind of ‘super-toilet’, helping to improve sanitation for people without access to utilities – at present some 2.5 billion people around the world.

This is how the Nano Membrane Toilet works: "The toilet flush uses a unique rotating mechanism to transport the mixture into the toilet without demanding water whilst simultaneously blocking odour and the user’s view of the waste. Solids separation (faeces) is principally accomplished through sedimentation. Loosely bound water (mostly from urine) is separated using low glass transition temperature hollow-fibre membranes. The unique nanostructured membrane wall facilitates water transport in the vapour state rather than as a liquid state which yields high rejection of pathogens and some odorous volatile compounds. A novel nano-coated bead enables water vapour recovery through encouraging the formation of water droplets at the nanobead surface. Once the droplets form a critical size, the water drains into a collection vessel for reuse at the household level in washing or irrigation applications. Following release of unbound water, the residual solids (around 20-25% solids) are transpo...

Next time you need to go in Minturn, Colorado, visit America's Best Public Restroom

2015-11-17T13:15:00-05:00

But this year’s champion bathroom, crowned by voters on Cintas’ website, is not nestled inside some upscale restaurant in a major city. It’s a public restroom in Minturn, Colorado. A collaboration between the town of Minturn, LaN Architecture’s Monika Wittig, LGM 3d Studios, and Noble Welding, the restrooms are meant to resemble a passageway into a Rocky Mountain mine. “The town rallied together and showed the value of a restroom that’s creative and memorable for guests,” [...].

From the America's Best Restroom Contest website:

Founded in 1904, Minturn is rich in mining history and its new public restrooms reflect its past. The unique digitally fabricated shape of the men’s and women’s restrooms resemble an adit (horizontal passage way) into a Rocky Mountain mine. The concept is the product of several key players: the Town of Minturn, LaN Architecture - Monika Wittig, LGM 3d Studios and Noble Welding. The team came together to produce “functional art” that’s already captured community attention! “Our public restrooms prove how great it is to combine art, architecture and creativity. It changes moods, places and people,” said Janet Hawkinson, director of design and construction for the public restroom project. “It would be the best to win the contest and show the country what can be accomplished when everyone works together to create something truly memorable, as we did in small town Minturn!”

Related on Archinect:

For those with discriminating taste, a competi...

Toilets for everyone: the politics of inclusive design

2015-11-05T13:31:00-05:00

With the issues of serving openly in the military and same-sex marriage now largely resolved, the fight for all-gender restrooms has emerged as the latest civil rights issue in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (L.G.B.T.) community — particularly the “T” part. Schools and universities (...), museums (...), restaurants (...) and even the White House (...) are recasting the traditional men’s/women’s room, resulting in a dizzying range of (often creative) signage and vocabulary.

Japan's simple logic for putting toilets in elevators

2015-06-05T13:23:00-04:00

while the idea of a fully plumbed potty zooming up and down the sides of a Tokyo skyscraper may seem like Japanese technical ingenuity taken a step too far, in reality this idea is born of reasonable and sensible practical concerns. [...] it remains likely that people will end up trapped in elevators if a large earthquake comes. [...] Japan's elevator industry is among the most advanced in the world ... Its toilet industry also leads the world in technical advancements.

The below video (available in Japanese and English versions) shows off a version of a elevator-specific toilet:

More elevator news:

Japan’s Toilennale is like the Venice Biennale, but for toilets

2014-06-20T12:53:00-04:00

Oita, a medium-sized manufacturing city in the southwest of Japan, hopes to make its mark next summer as the host of the first Toilennale—an arts festival celebrating toilets. [...] Tourism is the main focus of the art exhibit, but the Toilennale also promises to improve city services by renovating and beautifying bathrooms throughout downtown, beyond the 12 being turned into installations.

Is it too late for Koolhaas to include the Toilennale in the "toilets" Fundamentals tome?

Get up to date on Venice Biennale news (toilet and non-toilet):

Terri Peters' coverage
Round-up of critical reactions from architectural publications