Part bathroom, part art gallery, the Tokyo Toilet / Shibuya project combines the two in a project which sees architect-designed toilets pop up all over Tokyo. The brainchild of Koji Yanai, the exhibition consists of one-of-a-kind pieces of architecture, different from one another. Beyond the obvious functionality, they offer surprises - concentrated in one area, they create an interesting itinerary for design connoisseurs.
Prominent architects and an artistic director (Japanese in the majority), including Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Sou Fujimoto, Shigeru Ban, Masamichi Katayama and Nigo®, to name a few, joined the project. Furniture designer Mark Newson joined them from abroad, and together they created everything from a squid to a boat, a spacecraft, a mushroom and a small house.
Seventeen restrooms were constructed or redesigned from the existing ones in Shibuya, with the full cooperation of the city. Shibuya includes Omotesando and Harajuku, the conglomerates home to high-end boutiques, hip retailers and fancy restaurants. The crowd is sensitive to something new - it was a perfect location.
The promotion was not for commercial purposes, but rather to heighten awareness, to maintain cleanliness and a respect for the cleaners. Yanai wrote to Wim Wenders, asking for a short video direction. Once the German film maker had come and visited all the sites, he pronounced, “I want to make a real movie.” This was the beginning of Perfect Days, that was honoured with the Prize of Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. Its plot narrates the daily life of a toilet cleaner, played by Koji Yakusho (who won the best actor award). The lonely character he plays, also an amateur photographer, reveals a series of black and white images of trees, captured with delicate light.
Photographer Daido Moriyama has captured this unique universe with his raw, striking images of the streets and ordinary people, mostly in contrasted black and white (almost like a low-resolution photocopy). He is a daring choice, but the photographer, close to 90 years old today, was enthusiastic about the proposition. “TTT has changed the reason of being of a public restroom,” Moriyama says.
