Public toilets were always urgent and of last resort, as they are usually unecom conditioned or uncomfortable. That is why the project of Shigeru Ban a Japanese architect attracted a lot of attention since together with their project “Tokyo Baths” decided to create a totally transparent enclosures in two public parks of the city.
“At first it’s hard to imagine how a public bath with transparent walls could help alleviate anxiety, but a anti-common sense design, made by one of Japan’s most innovative architects is intended to provoke just this,” Forbes magazine said. Bathrooms can be used since August this year and are located in the park, Haru-no-Ogawa and Yoyogi Fukamachi But how do they work? Obviously it is not a morbid, the bathroom has its logical explanation and a system that provides privacy to those who use it. The system works in such a way that a person when the latch enters and runs the walls are opaque, so that it does not allow to see anything that happens inside.
And the idea of making them transparent has to do with the preview of a clean, neat bathroom that looks from the outside and then when entering, becomes opaque to give privacy to its occupants. Ban’s works are part of the Tokyo Bath Project, which the nonprofit Nippon launched to renovate 17 public restrooms in the parks of Shibuya, one of Tokyo’s most hectic commercial areas. Ban and Masamichi Katayama, Fumihiko Maki and Nao Tamura have so far opened; Takenosuke Sakakura and Tadao Ando will follow in the coming weeks. The project will be phased out until spring 2021.
