Precedents: Network Rail

The toilet’s at London Victoria station, are probably the capital’s busiest toilets, managing the demands of the 80m passengers who use the station every year. In 2019 they underwent a £4m revamp, in order to provide people with a clean, modern, reliable and comfortable facilities that befit one of the busiest and most iconic stations in the country, in response to a brief from Network Rail that Architects, Landolt + Brown, develop a design for ‘world class’ facilities.

The project, which takes much of it’s inspiration from the built-to-last traditional Edwardian public toilet design, incorporating high-quality materials and state-of-the-art plumbing systems, with a ‘built in’ rather than ‘fit-out’ approach that has robust and weighty, but elegant and timeless characteristics. This design approach has subsequently gone on to form the basis of Network Rail’s national design guidance for toilets, prepared by Landolt + Brown, cementing this project as the prototype for subsequent toilet refurbishments across the rail network, including the recently refurbished London Bridge station and soon-to-be-refurbished London Waterloo station.

As such, the project is a key precedent for us to review, as we look at how we create ‘the best toilets on the motorway’, which have similar robust and timeless characteristics, in a similar high-traffic, high-use environment.

Architects: Landolt + Brown.

Fit out contractor: Maxwood Washrooms.

Materials: Glazed Brick, Bronze, Copper, Terrazzo (all traditionally used in London’s railway architecture).

In spite of the carefully considered, robust design, the images below, demonstrate one aspect of the toilet design that feels like an afterthought: the sanitary bins, an essential component to the female toilets. These supposedly generous cubicles don’t appear to give ample room to house the sanitary bins, which stand proud from the wall due to the coved skirting, and give the impression that they’re likely to make contact with the thigh of any user who sits on the toilet seat.

And, whilst clever material use is evident throughout the rest of the toilet facility, these bins seem poor quality in comparison, plastic and lacking a foot-pedal, meaning that users have no choice but to touch sanitary bins with their hands, despite the rest of the sanitary applicances in the facility being touch-free.

The image below shows the original design intent for these cubicles with a side-by-side comparison of the original 3D rendering, a cubicle photo from the gents, and a cubicle photo from the ladies.

Likely these sub-par receptacles are in part down to the washroom hygiene company that supply and service the units, so it’s important to establish a working relationship with the company in question from early on in the design phase in order to ensure that their units can be incorporated into the design of the cubicles, or establish whether said provider is willing to service bespoke or built-in units as potential alternatives to their standard plastic sanitary bin offering.

Architects: Landolt + Brown.
Fit out contractor: Maxwood Washrooms.
Materials: Glazed Brick, Stainless Steel, Terrazzo

The recently refurbished London Bridge station carries many of the same principles through from the London Victoria Station, however it lacks the warmth and elegance of the first scheme as a result of the change in the materials palette.

Where London Victoria (LV) has warm bronze and dust-pink satin glass cubicles with copper-faced doors, London Bridge (LB) has stark white and mint-green satin glass cubicles with stainless-steel-faced cubicle doors. Where LV benefits from coved skirting in a grey terrazo providing a soft-contrast colour, LB has a harsh dark black coved skirting, which draws the eye. And the soft -grey grout of LV has again been replaced with black grout in the LB toilets. The introduction of a second shade of terrazo flooring inside the cubicles, forcing a transition from grey into mint green, is equally jarring, and lacks the seamless simplicity from the previous scheme. Other important elements, such as the high-level glass partitions between cubicles appear to have been omitted from this latest scheme, undoubtedly a cost-saving, but an important element which detracts from the privacy, dignity and comfort of the visitors who come to use it.

Architects: Landolt + Brown.

The proposed Waterloo Station look to follow the London Victoria Station scheme a little more closely, with the reintroduction of greys over blacks, and re-use of the warm bronze/copper accents, as well as a re-introduction of the high-level privacy screen too.