Project: New Forest Public Toilets
Public toilets are perhaps not the first type of building that comes to mind when thinking about architecture, yet as minor public buildings, they do deserve to be designed with some higher aspirations. John Pardey Architects were commissioned in 2002 by New Forest District Council to design a series of replacement public toilets and so we set ourselves the task of designing a ‘kit of parts’ that could be adapted to different locations. This resulted in a light steel frame, set onto pad foundations and infilled with aerated concrete blockwork to form a ‘solid’ shell that could take a variety of external cladding materials, dependant on the context. Roofs are in timber construction, lightly insulated to dampen rain noise only as the buildings are unheated and incorporate high level glazing for natural day lighting. A central service duct allows for all services to be hidden and accessible. In the first project in Lymington, we provided a small loggia to the front of the building visible. Two pyramidal roofs gain light from lanterns at their apex. Exterior walls are rendered and painted a terracotta colour to pick up on the orange brick of the adjacent Victorian building. To avoid one of the most difficult cleaning points in many public toilets, walls are lifted off the concrete and a drainage channels inserted in the floor at the perimeter. A similar open gap at roof level provides a great deal of natural ventilation within the building. These gaps have more in common with an European sense of openness about private functions (the French ‘pissoires’ for example), yet sightlines are carefully controlled to maintain a more English modesty. Internally, nothing touches the floor and this idea of floating is extended into the use of watery swimming pool mosaic tiles on the walls. All subsequent buildings used the same kit of parts, but with each building the roof shape and the cladding materials varied according to location and context. In Brockenhurst, the building was located to form a threshold to the village car park, a kind of gatehouse. Conceived as the bringing together of two equal halves, male and female, around a central service core, this is expressed as two zinc clad, steeply pitched roofs, each riven by a continuous strip of roof glazing at the apex that flood the interiors with natural light. The overall form is
reminiscent of both agricultural barn and simultaneously, an ecclesiastic formperhaps well placed between the sacred and the profane. In Milford on Sea, the site faces the promenade next to a shingle beach and the sea, which led to the idea of a covered entrance portico and protective wall that also provides a place for a public bench facing the sea (another minor civic gesture). The roof here is a gull-wing aptly hovering above the building. In Calshot, the site again sits in a small public car park, just behind the shingle beach of the Spit. Nearby beach huts were the catalyst for the sharp and defining roof form. A simple and contrasting palette of materials was used, a galvanised corrugated metal roofing and a light grey timber clad base, to echo the modesty of the nearby beach huts. In Lymington (a second facility) the building was placed in the middle of a large car park serving the town and so we created a floating flat roof, hovering above the building as an analogy to the flat tarmac context. A large portico created a space for a long bench for momentary relaxation. In Totton, the mono-pitched roofs, formed in single panels of cross laminated timer, salute the Police Station opposite.
PROJECT DETAILS Client: Status: Contract value:
New Forest District Council Completed 2002 – 2008 £1, 200,000.00
Structural Engineer:
Barton Engineers