Maida Hill Public Toilets
In Maida Hill, North Paddington, Studio Weave has completed a distinctive building: a small public toilet pavilion composed of reclaimed stone taken from a demolished office building at Broadgate in the City of London. Material that once formed the cladding of a corporate headquarters has been recut and assembled as the structure of a modest civic building serving a neighbourhood market. Stone that has effectively travelled from the financial district to a local square.
The project is part of the wider revitalisation of Maida Hill Market, funded by Westminster City Council and the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund. It replaces former underground conveniences with a fully accessible ground-level facility: three toilets, including a wheelchair-accessible unit. The brief responds directly to community feedback from public engagement. At one level it is simply a practical response to a familiar civic problem. The British Toilet Association reports that 40% of public toilets have closed since 2000.
Approach
The architects describe the approach as “deep reuse”: not only recycling material for technical reasons, but allowing the material to carry its own narrative through the city. The stone – pink Finnish granite and Norwegian larvikite – once hung as heavy cladding on a steel frame. In Maida Hill it becomes self-supporting, forming the walls of the building itself. The reused stone was processed as little as possible to form the new structure, meaning retaining the large module size and either the existing (polished) finish, or the split face from the processing. What was once decorative skin now performs structurally – contemporary and highly efficient – an approach that stems from a close collaboration with Stone Masonry Company (SMC) and Webb Yates as structural engineers.
The architectural interest for the building is in how this unglamorous typology, the public toilet, is treated with unusual seriousness. The structure is extremely simple: large slabs of reclaimed stone are arranged to form a compact enclosure around an ‘automated public convenience’. The surfaces show the marks of cutting and splitting, highlighting the reused material rather than concealing it.
The stone carapace stands independently of the internal unit, meaning the toilet mechanism can be replaced or upgraded over time without dismantling the building itself. Even the stone has been detailed so it can be demounted and reused again if necessary — an architecture designed with another future life in mind. The idea echoes what the masons call the “urban quarry”: the notion that the city already contains a vast reserve of high-quality materials waiting to be reused. Instead of extracting new resources, architects might increasingly mine the fabric of existing buildings. The trajectory of the stone is part of the narrative of the building – It moves from a high finance to a local market; from private corporate architecture to public convenience. It is an unlikely hierarchy of reuse.
Landscape and Public Realm
The building is embedded in the landscape. Studio Weave have been working closely with Tom Massey Studio to produce a considered, low maintenance vision for the horticultural specification — Crevice planting (including native sea thrift) has been used to tie the stone into the landscape, while also minimising demand for water.
Boulders provide seating, but also ground the building. They tie the architectural language to the landscape. The landscape has been designed to work with the wider LDA public realm scheme, which includes new seating and planting, providing a more welcoming and accommodating place for locals and visitors.
Urban Context
The project is the final phase of the Maida Hill Market improvement works. Designs have been produced in response to longstanding ideas and aspirations of local community groups and networks.
Public toilets are a necessary component of a safe and dignified public space. Going beyond this, by nimbly working with reclaimed high-quality stone, Studio Weave have brought some cost efficient public luxury to Maida Hill. The building aims to be generous, offering seating as well as public convenience. It is part of Studio Weave’s longer exploration of the idea of ‘affordance’ in public design – posing the question; what positive behaviours can buildings and landscapes invite or enable?
