Toilet Stories is a student-based interior design project and global design pedagogy collaboration between RMIT University, University of the Arts London, and Toronto Metropolitan University.
Toilets are often profoundly intimate spaces. Instrumental in how we present to the world, they are as much facilitators of subjectivity and self-expression as our closets. Yet, their interior planning often expresses heterosexist binary ideologies that conflict with how we may typically understand our subjectivity and its production.
Interior design students from all three universities explored toilet interiors in relation to public space, culture, sexuality, and politics. Students developed tactics in narrative, decoration and subversion to explore ways of queering the interior design of toilets. The project aims to generate an expansive conversation on this interior typology by addressing contemporary issues around gender, sexuality, utility, cleanliness, and class within the discipline of interior design.
This exhibition showcases projects from interior design students from three cities—Melbourne, London, and Toronto—with varying conditions and concerns about public toilets. The collection will travel to the three cities as part of the Design Week festival program in each city throughout 2024.
