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The state of the everyday "public convenience” effects all of us, whenever we are out and about, whatever our age or background. So, in order to define a brief, 100 people* were asked what they thought about public loos, their concerns and aspirations...and this is what the survey said:

• 75% of people want a ‘hands-free’ toilet experience
• 70% of people are willing to spend up to 20p on the use of a high quality public toilet - and in fact many people just “go private” to access a toilet making use of pubs, bars, cafés, hotels
• 65% of people want a more hygienic environment than public toilets currently offer.

We combined this desire for cleanliness and quality with putting beauty back on to our streets. So our WC is elevated to the status of a well-loved civic monument – as a series of public sculptures, a celebration of sanitation. Offering a bespoke sense of place rather than a standardised solution, the toilets incorporate Fountains, perhaps devoted to mythical river gods, and offer the city both art and practicality. Along with statuary and sculpture, each would be designed with a free-flowing drinking and handwash fountain, generous informal seating as well as the promise of best-maintained toilets in the western world, supported of hourly visits from a new breed of urban patrol: the Toilet Wardens.

Inside each toilet is a “touch free experience”, where you -
1. Pay by credit card/cash/mobile/SMS – just like parking meters
2. Enter using automatically opening doors, auto lock remotely, use auto flush and hands-free taps to avoid touching.
3. Rather than using a full bleach-steam clean like today’s pod toilets (which scare users lest they too become steam-cleaned...), we propose simple self cleaning toilet seats, with sensors that recognise when immediate maintenance is needed.
4. And ever mindful of waste...water from the drinking fountains can be recycled to flush WC cisterns and to clean the surrounding pavements, and the grey water from the wash hand basin itself can be used to irrigate local trees and parks, and simple photovoltaic cells would power the automatic sensors and sign.

In essence, these micro-monuments would offer the promise of personal hygiene on an infrastructural scale.

addendum:
* vox pox survey taken The Strand, London, Tuesday 21st July 2009.