TOILET
No architectural treatise cites the toilet as the primordial element of architecture, but the toilet is today the fundamental zone of interaction between humans and architecture on the most intimate level. once a respectable communal activity in roman cities, going to the toilet gradu- ally became privatized, enclosed within architecture. in the nineteenth century, enabled by flush technology, the s-trap, and modern plumbing, the toilet united in a single room with the bath—a union of the dirty and the clean that had only been safely achieved a handful of times in history. the domestication, privatization, and proliferation of the toilet is the great unspoken driver behind much architecture and urban planning. But at the moment where the globalization of the euro-american toilet and its attendant behavior is on the brink of completion, the model it depends on—abundant water, sophisticated plumbing, large-scale sewage and purification systems—is increasingly untenable and unaffordable. the toilet is at once the most private and the most political element, subject to government interference at least since King Francois’ 1539 edict instruct- ing the citizens of Paris to take responsibility for the collection and proper disposal of their “waters.” today, the toilet is the site of cultural superim- positions (sit-toilets with grated sides for squatting on) and resistance, philanthropy (Bill and melinda Gates Foundation’s challenge to “reinvent the toilet”), and habits that only seem to be intractable...
- BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2014 / Fundamentals_Toilet