joel laumans | adaptive interfaces

Pooping in Public

Sitting on the pot, pushing brown, desecrating the throne, doing the doodly-squat, faxing a cigar to Castro, or whatever else you want to call it, it usually is our private moment of Zen.

However Monica Bonvicini came up with a design with preserves our privacy without obstructing us from the environment around us. Bonvicini’s ‘Don’t Miss a Sec’ is a public toilet built with walls of one-way mirrors. From the outside it looks like a large silver box, but inside is a toilet with a 360 degree view of the street around you.

It seems this toilet is “touring” through different cities, and will now be in the center of Rotterdam (Netherlands) until some time in November. I’m sure many of you have read about this before, so had I. But the moment I saw it in person, walked inside and started urinating while watching people walk by it amazed me how directly design had an impact on my immediate environment. It was sensational, I felt like I was starring in “Hollow Man” as I could watch world while being completely invisible to them! There is not much else I can say about

Anyone in the neighborhood should definitely take a look, because peeing in public never felt so good. The toilet is in the center of Rotterdam in front of the Stadhuis, and shouldn’t be hard to find.

Don’t know how one-way mirrors work? Read this