Mushroom-shaped Mobile Toilet Design

There are two typical forms of mushroom-shaped mobile toilet design, each with unique design concepts and functional features.

One is a public toilet located in Shibuya, Tokyo, designed by Pritzker Prize winner Toyo Ito for the 'Tokyo Toilet Project'. It has a distinctive appearance, with an overall shape resembling a mushroom, composed of three independent cylindrical buildings. Each cylinder has a cantilevered dome at the top. This unique shape not only brings a novel visual experience but also evokes images of naturally growing mushrooms in the forests around nearby shrines, creating a harmonious and creative echo with the surrounding environment. From a functional perspective, as a public toilet, the three independent cylindrical buildings may serve different functional areas, such as men's, women's, and accessible toilets, meeting the needs of different groups of people. The cantilevered dome design may, to some extent, provide shelter from wind and rain, offering a relatively comfortable toilet environment for users while also enhancing the building's aesthetic appeal and uniqueness.

The other is a mushroom toilet invented by Canadian university students, which focuses more on environmental protection and resource recycling. This toilet does not require flushing with water. It has a simple yet fully functional structure, consisting of a water storage tank, a seat, and a container for collecting excrement. The water storage tank is made of mycelium, and the spores inside help decompose the excrement, which is the key to its environmentally friendly design. By using biological decomposition to treat excrement, it reduces dependence on water resources and the need for traditional sewage treatment. The simple combination of the seat and container allows for the separate treatment of solid and liquid excrement, facilitating more efficient subsequent utilization and treatment. After one month of use, the toilet can be directly buried in the ground as fertilizer, and it comes with seeds that can be planted above the buried toilet location, achieving the conversion of excrement into fertilizer and the recycling of the ecosystem, fully embodying the concept of sustainable development. It is suitable for areas with scarce water resources or high environmental protection requirements.