Anecdotes

including Assume the Position, Pop a Poo and Latrinalia.

Architecture

Public Inconvenience

The decline of the public toilet has shadowed the rise of global cities. Architecture critic Owen Hatherley considers the implications of being caught short in London.

Japan

In Praise of Privacy

Japan is famous the world over for its toilets. Architecture academic Julian Worrall tracks the squat’s rapid evolution to the high-tech washlet.

Interview

A Dairy Farmer

‘The shit is more valuable than the milk’.

Fiction

Before Pudding

A short story by Rosanna Mclaughlin

Visual Essay

The Grand Tour

The development of the bathroom charts some of our deepest fears and desires. Author of influential book Bathroom, Barbara Penner takes us on a visual tour charting this important room’s evolution.

Humour

Pull My Finger

Everyone loves a good fart gag or poo-bum joke. Academic Justin Clemens psychoanalyses our perennial fascination with the one about…

Interview

An Engineer

‘People sometimes refer to the tunnels as a cathedral of sewage’.

Gender

A Piss-Poor Performance

What does it take to design a truly gender-neutral toilet? With debates raging across the US, artist Alex Schweder stands up for women who do the same.

Interview

A Paleoscatologist

‘One type was known to emerge from every orifice of the human body including the nose and the corner of the eye.’

Visual Essay

Power Toilets

Between 2010 and 2013 art collective Superflex erected replicas of the toilets servicing the world’s most powerful institutions, in various unlikely locations, for public use. Member Rasmus Nielsen explains why.

India

A National Blockage

Of the estimated 946 million people worldwide who don’t use toilets, 564 million live in India. Journalist Debika Ray surveys the role design can play in dealing with the country’s sanitation problem.