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.

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.

As Newson explains: “It is important to me that the Toilet feels trustworthy and honest inside and out: The bright interior is seamlessly and hygienically finished in a monochromatic green, one of my favourite colors. My design for the Toilet focuses on functionality, simplicity, and creating an inviting and enduring space.”

Newson, who has won a multitude of high-profile awards since graduating from the University of Sydney in 1986, joins other first-name designers and architects such as Kengo Kuma, Nigo, and former Pritzker Prize winners Toyo Ito, Tadao Ando, Fumihiko Maki, and Shigeru Ban as creators of what the Foundation calls an important “step toward achieving a society that embraces diversity.”

Newson is also the only non-Japanese designer affiliated with the project. Equally noteworthy, Tokyo-Ga and Alice in the Cities director Wim Wenders has referred to the restrooms as a uniquely “utopian idea” and will elevate them as the setting in an untitled forthcoming feature film about the city. 

More information, including an archive of the project, can be found here.