Designs for a toilet on Victoria Embankment

Westminster council has appointed Hugh Broughton Architects and artist James Lambert to refurbish eight toilets in the borough as part of celebrations for ‘World Toilet Day’.

The council said the £12.7m project, part of a wider strategy to rethink the provision of toilets across Westminster, will bring together architecture, engineering and art to deliver a “holistic vision for equitable space in the heart of the capital”.

Toilets at Victoria Embankment, Parliament Street, Piccadilly Circus and Green Park will all receive an extensive refurbishment along with those at Carnaby Street, Westminster Pier, Covent Garden and Leicester Square.

Hugh Broughton Architects, the practice behind the refurbishment of Clifford’s Tower in York, has been commissioned for the scheme by Westminster’s infrastructure partner FM Conway, due to be bought by Vinci, along with Healthmatic and the Contemporary Arts Society.

It aims to use high quality and inclusive design to address issues of maintenance and antisocial behaviour which affect London’s public toilets.

Westminster said the project will seek to “enshrine as much civic pride as the Victorians displayed when they first started looking at a proper sanitation system for the general public in the 19th century”.

The first toilets to open will be on Victoria Embankment, featuring “lines of energy” intended to represent Joseph Bazelgette’s complex feat of engineering, and an embankment “guardian sphinx”.

There will also be design references to the London Underground and the sights of Victoria Embankment Gardens, along with the Thames as seen in a stylised Tattershall Castle Steamer and abstracted anchors and palm trees echoing the historical importance of the river in shaping global sea trade routes.

World Toilet Day, which is being held today, is an official United Nations international observance day seeking to inspire action to improve sanitation across the world.

A proposal for the Piccadilly Circus toilet