Your Restroom is a Battleground

17th Venice Architecture Biennale

київського Музею історії туалету, Kyiv

Mayrit 2024 Madrid Biennial of Design and Architecture

MAK Center, Los Angeles

Venice: May 22nd-November 21st, 2021/ Acquired by київського Музею історії туалету, Kyiv, 2021

Madrid: March 3rd-August 25th, 2024 / Los Angeles: June 22nd-September 15th

Restrooms are often described as neutral facilities or mere utilitarian infrastructures catering to the universal needs of individuals. But they are contested spaces that are shaped by and in turn shape the ways bodies and communities come together. Restrooms are architectures where gender, religion, race, ability, hygiene, health, environmental concerns, and the economy are defined culturally and articulated materially. In the last years, the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and growing tensions derived from population displacements have made these entanglements more evident. Restrooms are not an isolated design problem but rather symptoms of larger disputes that can be mediated through architectural tools. Restrooms are political architectures, they are battlegrounds.

Research and Design: Matilde Cassani; Ignacio G. Galán; Iván L. Munuera; Joel Sanders

Model Design and Production: Pablo Saiz del Rio
Graphic and Web Design: Paula Vilaplana de Miguel
Multimedia Production: Paula Vilaplana de Miguel and Jorge Lopez Conde
Research and Design Collaboration: Seb Choe; Leonardo Gatti; Vanessa Gonzalez ; Marco Li; and Maria Chiara Pastore
Podcast voices: M. Diamond, Paola Pardo Castillo, Jean Im, Matty Cheesbrough, Stuart Sagar, Aimie Hamraie, Gavin Grimm, Jean Evens, Pierre Stanley, Thamara Hela, Barbara Penner, Joshua Block, Masixole Feni, Wang Xiu Ying, Antoine Comets, Malivai Luce
Location: Corderie dell’Arsenale
Sponsors: Elise Jaffe+Jeffrey Brown, Barnard College (Columbia University), Princeton University School of Architecture, Yale University School of Architecture

The 17th Venice Architecture Biennale was curated by Hashim Sarkis