Hamilton architects' design, showing public washrooms can be essential and 'beautiful,' wins contest

CBC

a day ago

Two Hamilton architects are hoping to change the way cities think about public toilets — and they've just won a Toronto design competition for doing it.
Alea Reid and Petra Matar of Design Partners in Architecture and Interiors (DPAI Architecture) won first place in To the Loo!, a competition challenging designers to reimagine public washrooms as safe, inclusive and sustainable infrastructure.
Their concept, Mycomorph, is on display at 401 Richmond Street in Toronto throughout the summer.
Inspired by the way mushrooms grow — "clustered, resilient, and adaptable" — Mycomorph uses modular pods that can be installed as single units on a street corner or grouped together in a park.
The design has curved walls for open sightlines, green roofs that collect rainwater for flushing the toilets, biodiverse concrete panels with seasonal moss and an interior concrete finish that can be hosed down for easier cleaning.
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.
"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."
Reid says Hamilton — like many Canadian cities — has significant gaps in public washroom access.
"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."
Designers out to end the 'stigma around public washrooms'
Hamilton Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch says he agrees.
"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.
Kroetsch said he hears from his constituents the number of bathrooms and public fountains has decreased over the past 25 years.
"What's happened is that our downtown has grown and become much more dense, and we have many more people living here [now]. But we haven't kept up," he said.
Kroetsch said he supports not only better access to public bathrooms but also other needs like garbage cans and drinking fountains.
He said these are "important to give people a sense of place" and pride.
He said he's been working with staff towards 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.
"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.
"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."
As for Reid and Matar, they hope that winning To the Loo! will spark interest from municipalities and manufacturers to bring Mycomorph from concept to reality.
"This isn't about building one or two pods," Matar said. "It's about scale — creating something cost-effective enough to roll out across a city, or even across the country."
For now, they say winning this competition is a chance to spark conversation and challenge assumptions.