Toiletowa, the small, great design and architecture project to which we dedicate this space, is the work of Japanese architect and designer Tono Mirai. To understand his work, it is worth reading the sentence with which he presents the philosophy of his architectural studio on his website: ‘from the earth we are born, to the earth we shall return’. Rather than launching a tragic admonition about life in general, with this statement he draws attention to the raw material that is ‘the focus of all his creations, in symbiosis with the generative process of nature’. After all, ‘people, biological species and minerals are born from the earth. Earth is found everywhere, and everywhere it is a source of life force.
Toiletowa is a public toilet serving a park in Miyoshi City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. In terms of design, it is a clear reflection of Tono Mirai’s work, a structure in which curves are the protagonists and wood and earth are the raw materials. As Tono Mirai explained to the design and architecture publication Dezeen, ‘two semi-circular walls of recycled rammed earth, placed in a staggered pattern, create a gentle movement and circulation in the forest’.
As for the construction, as we said, it was built with rammed recycled earth. For this, Tono Mirai Architects enlisted the help of Japanese waste recovery company Ishizaka Corp, which processed materials from demolished houses to produce clean earth, suitable for construction. According to Tono Mirai’s statement to Dezeen, the recycled soil ‘had only been used as a roadbed material for pavement’, not as a building material. Due to its lack of compressive strength, the architect explained, it was necessary to use a wooden structure to support the material, as well as to add slaked lime to the mixture to give it more consistency.
Finally, next to the toilet is a semicircular wooden building that houses a system for purifying waste water, created by the engineering company IS Engineering, for subsequent reuse in the irrigation of the surrounding gardens.
Sources: Dezeen, Tono Mirai.
Images: Takeshi Noguchi vía Tono Mirai.
