Space-age toilet built to survive S.F. streets
25 new stainless steel loos replacing Paris-style units
The future of public toilets has touched down in San Francisco — at least if you dream of stainless steel loos that radiate a space-age sheen.
The contemporary commode opened for service Wednesday, offering up to eight minutes of privacy on one of the city’s high-visibility promenades, at the edge of Embarcadero Plaza between Market Street and the Ferry Building. The plan is to install 24 identical siblings during the next year or so, replacing an equal number that date back to the mid-1990s.
A public convenience in more ways than one, the newcomer is a symbol of changing tastes in civic architecture. It’s a reminder of the controversies surrounding such supposed examples of extravagant infrastructure as the $1.7 million toilet that was planned for Noe Valley — though this one costs the city nothing, bureaucrats are quick to emphasize.
And, at the most basic level, the extent to which the realities of city life influence the details of what goes up around us.
“From the outside, it’s a design. In the core, it’s a service,” said J. Francois Nion, who runs the West Coast office of Paris-based “street furniture company” JCDecaux. “We’re trying to provide amenities that the public needs.”
JCDecaux installed the first generation of 25
public toilets, the forestgreen ones with an Art Nouveau look, in the downtown area and in such heavily visited locales as Twin Peaks. The replacements are abstractly futuristic, like two mottled metal cones blurred into a single form. The base is concrete cloaked in metallic paint; the bulbous swells above reflect surrounding colors and lights without acting like mirrors.
While the look has changed, the basics of the contract between JCDecaux and San Francisco Public Works are the same. In return for building and installing 25 public toilets, in the same locations as the current ones, JCDecaux gets to have 114 advertising kiosks on busy corridors such as Market Street and tourist zones including Fisherman’s Wharf. The company foots the bill for maintenance, cleaning and anything else that might arise.
Those aspects also influence the design.
The mottled stainless steel, a textural touch that lightens the potentially heaviness of the form, also plays a defensive role. It’s a reasonably sticker-resistant surface, one of Public Works’ concerns. The gently curving exterior that looks seamless consists of easily replaced rectangular panels.
One large section of the outer skin swings open to reveal ... a fold-down seat for the person who might be staffing the toilet as part of the city’s Pit Stop program, which was started in 2014 as a way to lessen the likelihood of vandalism, drug use, prostitution and the like. JCDecaux will fund the staffing as part of the 20year program.
“The idea is to make it as indestructible as possible,” said Tyler Krehlik of SmithGroup, the architect. “We spent a lot of (design) time coming up with something to look at that would also be simple and durable from a technical standpoint.”
There’s even a practical aspect to the deliberately futuristic aura of toilets 2.0: “Some of our architects just walk by the ones now there, they never noticed they existed,” Krehlik said, because the Parisian-styled toilets from the first time around are so discreet. “We felt we needed to bring (the replacements) a little more to the front.”
When the proposed designs surfaced in 2018, there was plenty of public
“From the outside, it’s a design. In the core, it’s a service. We’re trying to provide amenities that the public needs.” J. Francois Nion of JCDecaux
reaction, include the late Chronicle cartoonist Don Asmussen’s depiction of them as toasters from outer space. But that was before the pandemic, a different era with much different concerns in terms of the look and feel and health of downtown San Francisco.
Even so, don’t be surprised if there are complaints from residents concerned about yet another assault on the landscape of their (recent) past. But that’s fine, according to city officials.
“Part of what makes San Francisco great is the public culture,” said Carla Short, interim director of Public Works. “They want to weigh in. They’re passionate about their city.”
Short has been to see the installation and liked what she saw — “it’s elegant in its shape, but not too attention-grabbing” — but stressed that performance counts for more than aesthetics.
That’s also the view of Rolf Stagg, who has watched the installation with particular interest: He spends his days on the grassy berm of Embarcadero Plaza, sleeps at night nearby, and made regular use of the location’s former toilet.
“It’s for us to use, homeless or not,” Stagg said. “I hope people don’t graffiti it — there are so many nuts out at nighttime.” His initial impression? “It’s nice,” he smiled. With one caveat: “I wish it had a shower, too.”