3D-Printed Portable Toilet May Be The Most Visually Pleasing One You’ll Ever See
Image via Nagami
Let’s face it. A portable toilet is not the epitome of aesthetically-pleasing product design. More often than not, it might as well be a signal for you to cross the road and perhaps avoid having to go too close to it.
‘The Throne’, a 3D-printed portable toilet glistening in white and with curves almost warranting envy, is an exception to this rule.
This unusual prototype was designed by Spanish studio Nagami for the To.org foundation, which consists of self-proclaimed “creative activists” who invest in ventures focusing on saving and healing the Earth.
Produced over the course of just three days, the teardrop-shaped pod includes a sliding door and circular skylight, letting light into the structure while maintaining privacy. Its exterior, thanks to being 3D-printed, dons a ribbed finish.
Interestingly-built is the waste system. It is, at the end of the day, still a toilet, after all. An off-the-shelf separation toilet efficiently sorts liquid and solid waste, the latter of which can be used as fertilizer.
However, due to hygiene concerns—3D printing tends to create distinctive grooves as the material is laid on top of itself, which would create a bacterial hazard if present in a toilet seat—the seat was a separate off-the-shelf product.
Image via Nagami
Nagami’s studio housed the production, which was completed by a seven-axis robotic printer using recycled plastic. “Plastic waste is a very low cost, inexhaustible resource,” Nachson Mimran, To.org founder, explains to Dezeen. “The Throne is a proof of concept for it can be used to create large structures that are both aesthetically pleasing and immensely useful.”
Image via Nagami
Thanks to the sheer volume of plastic waste available, it’s possible that this design could be expanded upon to provide accessible, affordable, and clean sanitation and shelter in areas that need it.
This might include places like urban slums, remote construction sites, or refugee settlements, Mimran states.
“We wanted to demonstrate that large-scale 3D printing can offer much more than ornamental pieces and single material elements,” Nagami CEO Manuel Jiménez García further elaborates.
“Indeed, it allows for the integration of other pieces, materials and textures, opening the door for the creation of objects, which combine different features that are commonly hard to achieve through 3D printing.”
The Throne comes as the evolution of the Bottle Brick Toilets, a project set up by To.org in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, a few years ago. These utilized bricks made from plastic bottles to simultaneously tackle the problems of plastic waste and human sanitation needs.
Its first prototype is currently being trialed on a remote building site in the Swiss Alps.
[via Dezeen, images via Nagami]
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