Shapeshift washroom Installation

CONCEPT
Designing a public bathroom by redefining decades of restrictions with personable design and non-conformist ideologies. In collaboration with the V&A’s ‘Fashioning Masculinities’ exhibition, the pod would be located in the underpassage of South Kensington Station, near the entrance to the V&A. This project is based on the
notion that bathrooms should be catered and fitted to each individual user. The pod would be clear through thermal imaging and its balloon-like shape that the space is occupied, creating a balance between provocation and practicality.
Around the time of the V&A’s founding, women were materially and physically restricted from integrating themselves wholly within public spaces. Women using the bathroom were to be kept strictly private in society, whereas men’s pissoirs were only built in hopes of reducing men from urinating in the streets. Propaganda included imagery of luxurious home bathrooms catered towards women to persuade women to stay at home.
Even after public bathrooms for women began to increase in popularity, using the toilet with heavy attire became another form of ‘urinary leash’. This was the foundational research for my concept of combining fashion and public spaces, as well as the politics surrounding women’s excess and safety.

I wanted to create an organic life-like structure that grows when in use to suit everybody, having been formed through the idea of being encased in a cocoon-like skin.
The outer layer of the ‘organism’ is made from sustainable latex material, allowing it to deflate and expand as needed.