Tana Toilet Blocks By Johan Mottelson and WSUP Madagascar

Tana toilet blocks, phase 2, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy

TANA TOILET BLOCKS

Tana Toilet Blocks is a project on sanitation design for public schools in Antananarivo, Madagascar. School toilets provide the only option for accessing adequate sanitation for many children from impoverished neighborhoods in Antananarivo. Consequently, school toilets play a crucial role for the hygiene conditions among children in such urban areas. However, lack of appropriate design solutions for the school toilets decrease the usability and ultimately compromise hygienic conditions for children in these communities. This project sought to improve the design of school toilets in order to address issues with public hygiene for impoverished children in Antananarivo. The project was developed in collaboration with Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP).

Nearly half the population of Madagascar lives in severe poverty and inadequate access to water and sanitation has a debilitating impact on health, well-being, and productivity. Nationally, water-related diseases cause at least a quarter of all deaths of children under five in urban areas. Two-thirds of the population in Antananarivo lives in informal settlements characterized by inadequate access to water and sanitation. This has a significant impact on the health, safety, and dignity of the residents of such low-income communities. WSUP has worked with the municipality in Antananarivo on designing and implementing school toilet projects in order to improve the hygiene conditions for children in impoverished communities. The Tana Toilet Block project sought to lower costs and improve the quality of school toilets. The project included an analysis of the workflow and the design of previous school toilet projects. Secondly, interviews with users and workshops with stakeholders highlighted a number of problems with previous projects. A design concept was developed in response to these findings consisting of a ‘toolbox’ including detailed toilet drawings split up in modules. This enabled faster planning of new toilet projects, utilization of best-practice solutions, and application of lowcost construction methods. On this basis, the project was successful in improving the user experience, reducing costs of construction, and reducing time spent on planning the toilet projects by the WSUP staff.

Tana toilet blocks, phase 2, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy →

WASH

WASH is an acronym for “water, sanitation, and hygiene”. According to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 6, everyone should have access to clean water and adequate sanitation by 2030. Consequently, WASH constitutes a key public health issue within international development. WASH can improve health, life expectancy, student learning, and gender equality. Accordingly, WASH is important in reducing illness, death, and poverty as well as enhance socio-economic development in developing countries.

In 2017, 2.3 billion people lived without adequate sanitation facilities and 844 million people lived without access to safe and clean drinking water, according to The World Health Organization (WHO). Although access to clean water and sanitation is improving at a global scale compared to previous years, the progress is slow and if the current development continues, SDG 6 will not be achieved by 2030.

Worldwide, approximately 700,000 children die every year due to diarrhea, partly caused by inadequate access to WASH. Studies have shown that improved sanitation provision in schools is linked with higher female-to-male enrolment ratios, and have reduced drop-out ratios for girls. Accordingly, adequate access to WASH not only has direct health benefits for children, but also impacts cognitive and intellectual development during their formative years in the school system.

Interviews and workshops

In the wake of developing and implementing toilet projects for 25 different schools, previous toilet projects were evaluated in order to optimize the design process and improve the quality of the future toilet projects. The project team inspected 15 school toilet blocks in Antananarivo over two weeks. Some were previous WSUP projects and some were part of the survey for future toilet projects. The project team spoke to students, guardians, and teachers to uncover their needs related to WASH. The evaluation of previous toilet projects highlighted a number of issues that the Tana Toilet Blocks project sought to address.

The user interviews identified the following issues: • Toilet cubicles have smell and heat problems • Locks and cistern flushes are often broken • Toilets for disabled persons are typically locked and not used as they are considered exclusively for disabled persons • Shower components are of bad quality and often broken • Some schools do not see the necessity for a shower so the showers are locked and not used • Menstruating girls are not using the showers as intended because they are embarrassed • Kids do not wash their hands with soap • Hand wash station faucets and taps are often broken The evaluation highlighted that toilet blocks and handwashing facilities are often not optimally designed and do not adequately consider the needs of the users (e.g. female students). Non-functioning and badly designed school toilets limit the options for good WASH habits. This leads to bad hygiene practices by the students and limits the positive ripple effects to the wider community.

The project team presented the findings to the Ministry of Education, Water Aid and other sector actors in a workshop to come up with possible solutions to these uncovered issues.

The following solutions were suggested by participants of the workshops: • Toilets for disabled persons and toilets for teachers should be merged as one toilet unit • Shower units should only be built if the school specifically asks for it • Toilets should have better airflow through roofs • Toilets should have a simple lock system • Toilet blocks should have a simple wet room with a tap for cleaning utilities • Mirrors above hand wash stations will increase the likelihood of users washing their hands • WSUP should buy high-quality components in bulk and provide them to the contractors • Students should pass by the hand wash station on the way out of the toilet blocks

↑ School visit Workshop with stakeholders →

Conventional toilet design, section

Technical assessment of previous projects

The project team conducted a technical analysis of previous toilet projects based on observations of built projects and project drawings in order to reduce costs and improve the quality of construction. This included an assessment of construction and detailing of toilets, an analysis of typological models, and an analysis of the toilet project design workflow.

The technical assessment identified a number of issues and questionable solutions in previous WSUP projects. Most, if not all projects were characterized by excessive use of steel and concrete, resulting in higher costs without increasing the quality of the toilet projects. In most cases, 20x20cm reinforced concrete columns were placed with around 150 cm spacing. Some projects had timber embedded in the wall structure, causing the timber to decay and the wall to crack as timber expands when exposed to humidity. Some projects lacked roof overhang, causing the walls to deteriorate. Some projects featured in-situ cast concrete gutters characterized by inferior technical performance and higher costs compared to regular gutters. Some projects included rainwaterharvesting concepts. However, all of these systems were malfunctioning. In one case, the PVC-pipes had cracked and thus failed to fill up the large plastic container for rainwater harvesting. In another case, the rainwater was led from the roof into the urinal as a flush mechanism. However, as a consequence, the septic tank filled up quickly. The school did not have the resources to empty the septic tank and ended up reworking the pipes, leading all waste from the entire toilet block directly into a neighboring canal. Many of the previous projects had suspended wooden ceilings. Although this detail does provide increased privacy in the cubicles, it increases costs and amplifies problems with odor and heat due to decreased air circulation.

The typological analysis of previous WSUP school toilet projects identified four different toilet models, deployed with minor variations in all the schools. The variations included the number of cubicles, unisex units/separation of gender, wheelchair access, indoor/outdoor urinals, and location of handwash stations. However, each of the four identified typologies had almost identical plan solutions. All toilets were single-story, with the following four plan layouts: A) Single row of cubicles with direct access; B) Single row of cubicles with an enclosed access space; C) L-shaped plan with direct access to cubicles; D) Double row of cubicles with central corridor providing access to each side. Typology A was by far the most common.

The workflow assessment concluded that the WSUP team used much of their resources developing in-situ solutions independently, which ended up with very similar results. At the start of the design process for new toilet projects, the WSUP staff would carry out a survey assessing the needs of the school and the space available for the project. Subsequently, a member of the WSUP staff would design a toilet from scratch. Each WSUP project engineer used different solutions and applied different design standards. The team delivered basic sketch projects with limited detailing to contractors through a tender process. The contractors would subsequently carry out the detailing of the projects according to their own standards. Different contractors carried out the projects, depending on the location of the projects. Accordingly, many resources were allocated to developing new designs for each new project but with similar end results, little detailing, and solutions determined by the individual engineer and contractor.

Even though each school has individual needs, the components of school toilet blocks are the same (e.g. urinals, toilet cubicles, handwash stations, etc.). Despite school toilet blocks generally consist of the same components and have limited plan solution variations, the toilet projects were designed from scratch during each project resulting in much time spent on producing basic drawings and detailing determined by the contractors. The analysis suggested that a higher degree of standardized solutions could both reduce time on designing and developing projects, avoid technically flawed solutions, and achieve a higher level of detailing before delivering the projects to the contractors.

Conventional toilet design, plan

Conventional toilet design

Technically flawed details

Tana toilet blocks, phase 1, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy

Project

The evaluation of previous toilet block projects highlighted issues with usability, technical performance of the buildings, and inefficient workflow regarding the development of new toilet projects. The new design sought to address these issues and thereby improve usability, reduce costs, and increase the quality of construction of new toilet blocks. The project included two phases, encompassing the construction of 10-15 school toilet projects each. The first phase of the project was developed based on the interviews, workshops, and technical assessment of previous projects. In the subsequent second phase, the design was iterated based on evaluation of the first phase of the project including both technical assessments as well as feedback from users and contractors.

The design features wall structures made entirely of bricks in order to address the excessive use of reinforced concrete seen in previous toilet projects. Thereby, the design excludes some of the costliest parts of the structure. The design was inspired by the common contemporary low-cost construction practice in informal settlements as well as examples of cultural heritage buildings in Antananarivo made of bricks and timber. The design features an open roof structure without suspended ceilings. This solution both lowers costs and decreases smell and heat issues through increased natural ventilation. The large roof overhang protects the facades from the rain and thus increases the building lifespan. Furthermore, the roof features steel joints between the timber structure and the brick walls, eliminating issues with cracking walls and rotting timber seen in previous toilet projects. The project included a number of design concepts for enhancing WASH oriented behavior, such as placing handwash stations by the entrance/exit of the toilets as well as installation of mirrors on the handwash stations in order to encourage more frequent hand washing.

The project sought to streamline the workflow of the design process and emphasize documented well-functioning design solutions, rather than each designer and contractor using their own preferred solutions. On this basis, the project team developed a school toilet design toolbox including a catalog of detailed AutoCad and Sketchup drawings of the elements needed to plan a school toilet project subdivided into modules. This included modular designs of standard toilet cubicles, hand wash stations, toilet units for teachers and disabled students, shower units, and urinals. Each module features detailed plan, section, elevation, and 3D drawings, that can easily be copied and put together to a complete toilet design in a few minutes. By using the toolbox rather than drawing up new toilet projects from scratch, the time needed for planning and designing a new toilet project is reduced significantly. Furthermore, a much higher level of detail is achieved before delivering the projects to the contractors compared to the previous workflow. More importantly, the toolbox establishes standardized best-practice solutions based on the evaluation of previous projects. The modular system allows adaptability to the needs and physical context of the individual school through

Tana toilet blocks, phase 2, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy →

Inspirational local architecture

Inspirational local architecture

Construction site, phase 1

Overuse of concrete and imitaded brick plastered walls in phase 1

Tana toilet blocks, phase 2, photo by Mitantsoa Rakotoanosy

sub-division of the components needed to plan the same typological variety of toilets seen in previous projects while having a set of standardized detailed solutions. The toolbox includes an excel sheet with material quantities and costs for each unit, thereby facilitating rapid quantity surveys and cost estimates. On this basis, the project was able to reduce costs of planning and construction while improving the quality of the toilet blocks for public schools.

The first phase of the project included toilet blocks for 12 schools in different parts of Antananarivo and was initiated in 2018. Two of these were refurbishments of old toilets and 10 new toilets were designed using the toolbox. The projects varied in scale and typology depending on the needs of the school and the constraints posed by the physical contexts. Four different contractors implemented the designs. As these contractors carried the legal responsibility of the construction projects, each contractor made amendments to the design based on their individual convictions of sound construction practice. Some contractors implemented designs loyal to the intentions of the new design toolbox. Others, made significant changes in the design, including decreased roof overhang and use of concrete in the structure with possible implications for durability and costs. The second phase of the project was implemented in 2019 based on a technical assessment of the toilet blocks constructed during the first phase as well as interviews with users and feedback from contractors. The first phase succeeded in improving usability, reducing construction costs, and streamlining the workflow of the WSUP staff. However, the link between the WSUP staff and the implementing contractors showed some room for improvements. Some contractors expressed concerns about the stability of the walls without a reinforced concrete peripheral tie between the top of the wall and the roof structure. Some contractors expressed concerns regarding the height of the pitched roof and its exposure to the risk of tropical storms. Accordingly, the toilet toolbox was iterated based on an evaluation of the first phase. This included addition of a peripheral tie made of reinforced concrete, increasing the stability of the wall structure while strengthening the joinery between the wall and roof structure. Furthermore, the height of the roof was reduced in order to decrease the risk posed by storms. The project highlights that a holistic design approach based on analysis of the wide variety of complex issues surrounding architecture projects can yield results in optimizing the use of resources and enhancing sustainable development.

Mount Hulene A grotesque man-made mountain of garbage emerges from the ground in the suburban informal settlement of Hulene, located approximately 10 km from the center of Maputo. Constant clouds of smoke of burning trash rise from the landfill and filters the glimpses of the city skyline through a misty haze from the steep rubble-slopes of Mount Hulene. Local groups of scavengers carefully examine these piles of garbage in search of recyclable plastic bottles which provide a basic source of income. In 2018, parts of the rubbish mountain slid and destroyed several adjacent houses killing 17 people after a period of heavy rain.