The man wanted to change public opinion. It is difficult to say how successful the mission was.
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma decided to go against the system. The man is tired of the fact that people perceive public toilets solely as a dirty, disgusting place. The Nippon Foundation’s new Kuma Tokyo Toilet Project was designed to fix that.
In a relatively short time, Kengo replaced ordinary brick toilets with designer wooden huts in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. There are five of them in the park. Between them there are stepped paths along which you can take a walk. Kuma christened this place an exotic village.
The huts themselves are lined with cedar planks in a chaotic manner. When equipping them, the architect also used wooden log cabins and sawn trunks. Inside they are equipped with modern technology. The complex is called “Walk in the Forest”.
We hope that the project will be able to debunk the traditional image of public toilets as dark, dirty, smelly and intimidating spaces, – concluded the executive director of the Nippon Foundation Jumpei Sasakawa in an interview with Dezeen.
By the way, this is not the first experiment of the Japanese to change the perception of public toilets. For example, in January, the local Suppose Design Office erected a booth at the station, which was shaped like a box. The concrete structure more than seven meters high around the perimeter had no points of contact with the road. It gave the impression that it was floating above the ground.
And last year, as part of the same project, a toilet in the city center was created in the form of a labyrinth. Local residents are ambivalent about new buildings. Some believe that the money spent on the project could have been used more rationally to change the city’s appearance for the better, writes Dezeen.