Designer Miles Pennington – professor of design-led innovation at the University of Tokyo – and DLX Design Lab have developed a multifunctional public bathroom in Tokyo, Japan. A space that lends itself to different uses, becoming a place for exhibitions, a cinema, a pop-up kiosk, an information centre that puts citizenship at the centre and aims to enhance the very idea of a public toilet.

“Public toilets are often underused, lose their value to people and are gradually forgotten”, Pennington said. “To try to reverse this trend, we created this toilet”. Conceived as part of the Tokyo Toilet initiative promoted by the non-profit Nippon Foundation, the project is one of 17 public toilets around the city, some of them designed by Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando and Fumiko Maki. 

Situated at the intersection of three streets in the Hatagaya district, the project is a multifaceted white volume with a covered “square” in the central area, with the actual bathrooms positioned around it. The choice of white is useful for displaying works of art and showing films, inviting people to use the space in different ways, encouraging creativity.

A seating system in the centre ensures flexibility and dynamism, for a constantly changing space: metal columns inserted in the floor can be pulled out and connected with the wooden seats, forming various configurations. The bathrooms, on the other hand, are located within three triangular structures – accessible from the inside and from the back of this urban, dynamic architecture. 

All images courtesy Nippon Foundation