Toilet-Shaped House Hopes To Be Flushed With Success
Posted October 19, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you’ve ever stayed in a hotel you’d describe as a toilet, have we got a place for you! It’s in the town of Suwon, South Korea just south of Seoul and it’s the world’s first house deliberately built in the shape of a toilet. The place is oval shaped and has a lid-like opening in the roof.
Why would anyone build such a structure? It turns out there is a method behind this lavatory madness and it comes from an organization that seems equally bizarre – but has a purpose. The General Assembly of the World Toilet Association put up the money for the glass, steel and concrete structure to raise money for those without the luxury of indoor plumbing or the facilities that go with them.
“About 40 per cent of the world’s population live without toilets,” explains the Association’s Sim Jae-duck. “I thought about ways how to help them, then I decided to launch a world association. This house is a symbol to collect money to help them.”
The house actually has a name – Haewoojae, far less a mouthful than its translation of “a place of sanctuary where one can solve one’s worries”. And you can probably guess what’s inside – more bathrooms.
The most ornate is at the centre point of the bowl – er, home – and features elegant fittings and high tech water conservation devices. There are four loos in all, ranging from the small to the large, along with a stream and a small garden. Of course, listening to that stream too long may make you need to use one of the rooms inside.
This bathroom door opens to the public on November 11th, and those behind the project hope it will be a going concern. The cost of staying there for one night? US$50,000. That money goes to help provide developing countries with toilet facilities.
Those who are watching the tank fill up with construction are impressed. “Toilets remind me of something dirty, but this house, is in the shape of a unique toilet,” observes 17-year-old Yoo Cho-hee. “It will be fun to live in the house.” If he can afford the price of admission. Visitors can tour the place for just a buck, making it both one of the cheapest and most expensive pay toilets in the world.
