Currelly Hall Washroom

On the ground floor of the Royal Ontario Museum, the Currelly Hall washrooms re-imagined by superkül studio bring new life and innovative design to a highly pragmatic program.

Renovated in time for the Royal Ontario Museum’s (ROM) centennial, the washrooms are designed to be both visually unique and expressive of the museum’s identity.

Unchanged in almost 40 years, the new washroom’s mandate included standing up to the daily wear and tear of visiting school groups during the day, whilst emerging in the evening as an elegant feature befitting the many galas, weddings and events that the museum hosts. They needed to be accessible to visitors of all ages and abilities, be easily maintained, and most importantly be bullet proof.

Much of the aesthetic inspiration for the project came from the ROM and its collections. Being a museum of natural and cultural history, the museum has an extensive anthology of fossils that were abstracted and embedded in various curvilinear forms. Symbolic of intellectual purity and completeness, wholeness and timelessness, and also an ideal nod to the centennial birthday (with its two circular zeros), curves and circles became a defining motif, carried throughout the design.

superkül studio, Royal Ontario Museum Currelly Hall Washroom Renewal, Toronto, Ontario

In order to truly achieve the museum’s objectives, the architects realized that no conventional sink or handdryer products would suffice. Instead they designed a unique, single, sinuous, element that combines the function of a counter with an ADA compliant trough-style sink at two heights – one for children and the other for adults and those in mobility devices – complete with an integral baby changing table and diaper disposal.

Complemented by combination water faucet-handryers by Dyson (the ‘Airblade Tap’) at both the children’s and adult’s sinks, the all-in-one Corian element allow visitors to both wash and dry their hands at the same location; shortening the overall time spent in the washroom by reducing cross-over traffic, which in turns ensures a cleaner and drier floor, lowers operating costs and eliminates paper towel waste.