Design

SIGHTSHITTING.COM

Winning entry of a competition for a public toilet at Karlsplatz, Vienna

Concept / Idea

The brief asked for a public toilet at Karlsplatz, on a site right next to the Karlskirche. I broke the rules on day one: instead of building beside Vienna's most beautiful Baroque church, I moved the project to the opposite side of the square. The reason is simple. Nobody looks at a landmark while standing next to it. The best seat in the house should have the best view, even if that seat is a toilet. The project name says it all: Sightshitting.com.

The concept fits on a postcard. Literally. At the first review I brought nothing but two postcards of the Karlskirche and said: this is my concept.

Design

The building is a flat, curved sculpture, half sunken into the ground of the park. Its green roof is walkable and merges seamlessly with the lawn, so from the square the architecture almost disappears and the view of the church remains untouched. Two separate entrances, one for men and one for women, lead down into the two wings of the building. Both routes meet at a shared exit, where a wide staircase rises back up to ground level, framing the Karlskirche like a picture at the end of the ascent. Leaving the toilet becomes the architectural climax: you walk up, and the church appears. A continuous glass slit along the edge of the roof brings daylight inside and opens the promised view: from the washrooms you look across the pond, directly at the dome and columns of the Karlskirche.

Details

The existing trees on the site were all preserved and turned into the interior's defining feature. Their trunks grow straight through the building and become functional objects: a glass pissoir wraps around one trunk like a blossom, a makeup table with mirrors circles another. Nature is not decoration here, it is the furniture. The interior follows the flowing white formal language of the shell: soft Corian surfaces, reflective floors, sculptural washbasins. At night the sunken building glows softly under the dark trees, with illuminated entrances marked simply MAN and WOMAN, turning the park edge into a small urban stage.