Easehouse is a temporary public toilet for ‘Singeldingen Foundation’ in a park in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. ‘Singeldingen’ is a summertime place for meeting and relaxing in the Heemraadspark, offering a temporary coffee bar and program to the neighborhood. Being a public resting place, this foundation also provides for public toilets in the park. To its own dismay, the choice for toilets so far was limited to eco friendly dixies, that’s why she looked for her own solution for public toilets in the park and asked LAGADO architects to design an attractive, inviting and above all, eccentric toilet, to reflect the ambitions of the foundation.
The toilets are situated in a heavily used playground at the Heemraadssingel, a characteristic green lung in an 19th century neighborhood. An inviting, diagonal step makes the height difference between a children’s toilet and an adult toilet. Once inside, the visitor is surprised by the triangulated roof that is partly kept open. This reinforces the idea of still being outside whilst also providing the necessary ventilation. The tree above the roof gives a protected, covered feeling and casts shadows into the interior and on the closed roof surfaces. Being a temporary building, the whole construction is made out of green and dark brown concreteplex, off which the exposed sides got sealed off with a transparant coating. The whole structure is designed in such a way that it can be partly taken apart and transported on a small trailer, for it is only used in summertime.
The design is made by LAGADO architects and executed by Huishout. The toilet is placed in the park between the beginning of May and the end of July, until summer holidays make a lot of people leave the country. As a pleasant surprise, local inhabitants offered to keep the coffee bar open and take care of cleaning the toilets from the end of July onwards to the end of the summer. It is exciting to see that such a humble little structure is embraced by the people it was designed for and that people take care to keep it functioning all summer long.
