Nobody talks about public toilets until they desperately need one, and then it's all anyone can think about. London Underground, bless its perpetually delayed heart, has decided that the subterranean bathrooms lurking beneath its busiest stations deserve better than decades of institutional beige and flickering fluorescent dread.
Hugh Broughton Architects has stepped in with a redesign that is, frankly, more stylish than most people's actual bathrooms. We're talking pink columns. Blue tiles. Art deco motifs. Stations like Piccadilly Circus and Green Park are getting facilities that look like they belong in a Wes Anderson film rather than a 1970s nightmare.
Wait, why does any of this actually matter?
Here's the thing - this isn't just aesthetic flexing (though the aesthetic flexing is very real and very appreciated). The redesign by Hugh Broughton Architects, with interiors led by James Lambert, is built around improving accessibility and inclusivity. Public toilets, particularly underground ones, have historically been a masterclass in exclusion. Cramped cubicles, confusing layouts, facilities that seem almost deliberately hostile to anyone with mobility needs, or frankly anyone who isn't a very specific type of person.
A well-designed public toilet is a small but genuinely meaningful act of civic care. It says: we thought about you. All of you. That's rarer than it should be.
The art deco angle is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
Leaning into art deco for a London Underground project is honestly a genius move. The tube's visual identity - those gorgeous roundels, the Johnston typeface, the geometric tile work at stations like Arnos Grove - has always had art deco DNA running through it. Picking up that thread for a bathroom renovation feels cohesive rather than try-hard.
Pink columns could have gone catastrophically wrong. They did not go catastrophically wrong. The combination of warm architectural details against cool blue tiling apparently lands somewhere between glamorous and functional, which is a needle very few public spaces manage to thread.
The bar was underground (literally)
To be fair, the bar for underground public toilets is not exactly stratospheric. Smelling vaguely okay and having working taps would put you in the top percentile. The fact that this redesign is genuinely beautiful feels almost radical.
But maybe that's the point. Maybe treating public infrastructure like it deserves real design attention - the kind usually reserved for boutique hotels and overpriced coffee shops - is exactly the energy cities need more of. Your commute is grim enough. You shouldn't have to suffer through the bathroom too.
Details on the full rollout are covered over at Designboom, which remains the internet's most reliable source for architecture news that actually makes you feel something.
