{"id":76668,"date":"2025-08-17T15:49:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T15:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/76668\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T15:49:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T15:49:10","slug":"hamilton-architects-design-showing-public-washrooms-can-be-essential-and-beautiful-wins-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/76668\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamilton architects’ design, showing public washrooms can be essential and ‘beautiful,’ wins contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Hamilton architects are hoping to change the way cities think about public toilets \u2014 and they’ve just won a Toronto design competition for doing it.<\/p>\n

Alea Reid and Petra Matar of\u00a0Design Partners in Architecture and Interiors (DPAI Architecture) won\u00a0first place in To the Loo!, a competition challenging designers to reimagine public washrooms as safe, inclusive and sustainable infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Their concept, Mycomorph, is on display at 401 Richmond Street in Toronto throughout the summer.<\/p>\n

\"ArchitecturalA rendering of Mycomorph, the mushroom-inspired public washroom concept by Reid and Matar. (Submitted by Design Partners in Architecture and Interiors)<\/p>\n

Inspired by the way mushrooms grow \u2014 “clustered, resilient, and adaptable” \u2014 Mycomorph uses modular pods that can be installed as single units on a street corner or grouped together in a park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The design has curved walls for open sightlines, green roofs that collect rainwater for flushing the toilets, biodiverse concrete panels with seasonal moss\u00a0and an interior concrete finish that can be hosed down for easier cleaning.<\/p>\n

It also features a built-in sound and art system, which can play music, community stories, or commissioned works, providing both a platform for local artists and a measure of auditory privacy for users.<\/p>\n

“If you put nice things in public spaces, people will treat them better,” said Matar. “This is about safety, dignity, and creating a space people actually want to be around.”<\/p>\n

Reid says Hamilton \u2014 like many Canadian cities \u2014 has significant gaps in public washroom access.<\/p>\n

“Our biggest parks, like Bayfront and Gage, don’t have enough facilities for the number of people using them,” she said. “And without that access, even our most public spaces aren’t truly public.”<\/p>\n

\"AnThe Mycomorph public washroom concept on display at 401 Richmond Street in Toronto as part of To the Loo! The design features curved walls, green roofs that collect rainwater, concrete panels with seasonal moss\u00a0and an interior concrete finish. (Submitted by Design Partners in Architecture and Interiors)Designers out to end the ‘stigma around public washrooms’<\/p>\n

Hamilton Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch says he agrees.<\/p>\n

“We really haven’t invested enough in our downtown as a city. We haven’t kept up with the amenities that people expect,” he told CBC Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Kroetsch said he hears from his constituents the number of bathrooms and public fountains has\u00a0decreased over the past 25 years.<\/p>\n

“What’s happened is that our downtown has grown and become much more dense, and we have many more people living here 1755445748. But we haven’t kept up,” he said.<\/p>\n

Kroetsch\u00a0said he supports not only better\u00a0access to\u00a0public bathrooms but also other needs\u00a0like garbage cans and drinking fountains.<\/p>\n

He said these are “important to give people a sense of place” and pride.<\/p>\n

He said he’s been working with staff\u00a0towards placing a new public bathroom somewhere in his ward using funding already in the budget. Staff will also have to explore how to make the facility feel safe and comfortable for all, said Kroetsch.<\/p>\n

“Then, hopefully, [we’ll] be able to bring something to the budget process to get … a pilot location to try doing this downtown again. It’s been long overdue,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Ultimately, the goal is to get some washrooms back in Gore Park at some point, not the same underground ones that got buried… but to bring washrooms back there because, of course, it’s a central part of our city.”<\/p>\n

\"TwoReid, left, said she wants people to see public washrooms ‘can be beautiful, welcoming, and essential to community life.’ (Shilpashree Jagannathan\/CBC)<\/p>\n

As for Reid and Matar, they hope that winning\u00a0To the Loo! will spark interest from municipalities and manufacturers to bring Mycomorph from concept to reality.<\/p>\n

“This isn’t about building one or two pods,” Matar said. “It’s about scale \u2014 creating something cost-effective enough to roll out across a city, or even across the country.”<\/p>\n

For now, they say winning this competition is a chance to spark conversation and challenge assumptions.<\/p>\n

“There’s a stigma around public washrooms,” Reid said. “We want people to see that they can be beautiful, welcoming, and essential to community life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Hamilton architects are hoping to change the way cities think about public toilets \u2014 and they’ve just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-76668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}