Is Toronto’s public design in the toilet?

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Toronto’s park department has announced a program to repair and replace more than 125 public bathrooms across the city. Finally, a long-overdue effort to tackle an essential civic problem. Yet the rush to act threatens Toronto’s design culture.

The Washroom Enhancement Project is rolling out rapidly. City spokesperson Jas Baweja says Toronto aims to have 35 projects finished by next year, especially in its most popular parks. The timing aligns neatly with the next municipal election.

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Fair enough. Toronto has long been hostile toward the unhoused, led by politicians who too often treat public space as an afterthought. Mayor Olivia Chow is trying to fix a decades-old mess: There aren’t enough washrooms, and those that do exist are frequently closed, poorly maintained and in disrepair. Upgrading the buildings won’t solve every problem, but it’s a start.

Unfortunately, like most of Toronto’s building projects, the washroom program is being badly managed. The city is buying architecture for all 125 sites at once, essentially guaranteeing a bland, one-size-fits-all approach from one of the country’s big twelve firms. About 55 replacements will rely on prefabricated buildings.

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Meanwhile, the buildings being repaired or replaced include dozens of gems: the cottage-style washrooms from the 1940s, or the angular, quirky structures of the 1960s. The latter category includes 12 sites in Toronto Island Park, the city’s most important public space. These washrooms include unique, idiosyncratic work by local architects. The 1960s Hanlan’s Point and Olympic Island washrooms by the late Irving Grossman are first-tier modern architecture.

Why doesn’t the city care to preserve these? It just finished a multiyear “plan” for this park, and yet that plan consists of vague platitudes. Toronto Parks is great at consulting and visioning. Building, not so much.

With the bathroom project, they hired an engineering firm, not architects, to set the terms. The result: bulk design procurement with no sense of the buildings’ cultural value.

This is an extraordinary missed opportunity. Many of Canada’s best architects would leap at the chance to design a public building in Toronto. These washrooms are modest projects – perfect for a small firm to devote serious attention, rather than a junior designer cranking out cheap, fast work in a large office.

Consider TO the Loo!, a design competition from the Toronto Public Space Committee. The winning design, “Mycomorph,” by intern Alea Reid and architect Petra Matar of Hamilton’s DPAI Architecture Inc., combines precast concrete modules, each providing a shower and lavatory. Commissioning ten of these designs from different firms could simultaneously showcase the talents of emerging architects and turn public toilets into civic branding.

Look abroad. In Tokyo’s Shibuya district, philanthropists commissioned 17 whimsical washrooms from top-tier architects. They’ve become tourist attractions – and the subject of a film, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days. Toronto, by contrast, is shopping for design at the big-box store.

This approach is doomed. Asking a team to think about 125 sites at once is a recipe for incoherence. Yet this is how the parks department does much of its work, in citywide “strategies” and “initiatives.” Meanwhile, specific places languish. For instance, there is no long-term vision for the historic and heavily used Trinity Bellwoods Park, which will get a new washroom. But parks is spending a year consulting the public about the park’s pathways. How does Toronto spend $400-million a year building parks without making anything memorable? This is how.

The right approach is the opposite: Prioritize. Be specific. Invest in design. Examine the results, and let each project teach the next.

After I began my inquiries about the washroom initiative, the city revised its procurement documents. “Design excellence” is now required, as is the inclusion of a heritage professional. A good first step – but only if followed by real attention to architecture, not just boxes to check.

It’s worth noting that the city’s new chief planner, Jason Thorne, is following city council’s direction to pursue a more beautiful city. One of his first moves is to examine how public places get designed and delivered. It would be nice if the rest of city government actually cared about that goal and helped it happen. Fixing broken toilets is one thing, but it takes more than that to build a city worth living in.