You can tell a lot about a place by the quality of its public toilets. I don't know about you, but if I'm at a restaurant and the toilets are filthy, I automatically assume that the kitchen is at least as filthy.

And so what does it say about Japan that it decided to hire the country's leading architects to design 17 new public toilets in Tokyo?

I first wrote about "The Tokyo Toilet" back in the summer of 2021. But now that the majority of them have been constructed, I figured it was time to revisit the project.

The two toilets designed by Shigeru Ban are particularly noteworthy in that they are clear glass boxes that become automatically opaque when in use. This was done so you can see if there's anyone lurking inside.

I also love this one by Kazoo Sato.

But of course, all of them are remarkable and all of them are probably better than the general level of public architecture that you'll find in most other cities.

I am really interested in these sorts of spaces. In this case, these is an old brutalist office building in Kanazawa, Japan that was purchased in 2019 by artist Hiraki Sawa. The original intent was to turn it into a co-working space, but eventually the idea evolved into a hybrid "co-being" space that can be rented as a place to stay and/or as a place to facilitate creativity.

The space itself was left mostly raw and exposed, but neon movable walls were inserted by AB Rogers Design that allow you to configure the volumes as you'd like. What's interesting about spaces like these is that they enable play and experimentation. Maybe it also makes money, or maybe it doesn't. But that doesn't seem to be the main point.

The point is to empower creativity. And finding spaces to do this can be tough in competitive markets where demand is consistently outstripping supply. Oftentimes you need some slack in the system so that there's literal breathing room for new ideas, or rich people who can make it so.

Whatever the case, I am a believer that when given the opportunity, people will generally find a way to imagine and create. So if you happen to find yourself in Kanazawa and would like to book this space, which is called Fish Market, click here. Guests are being asked to submit a request explaining how and why they'd like to use the space.

It'll be fun to see what this leads to.

Photos: Takumi Ota via AB Rogers Design

As a gross generalization, there are probably two ways in which one can approach the building of a new building. The first is based on demand. You believe that there is demand for new housing or new office space or some other use, and so you decide to build new space in order to satisfy that exact demand.

Sometimes developers get it wrong and build too much space or the wrong kind of space, but the reason for building remains the same: you believe that there is a market waiting for you.

The second way to build is to completely disregard the market and just build whatever you feel like building because it is going to serve some other alleged purpose. And that is arguably what is happening in Saudi Arabia with The Line and what happened in places like North Korea with its "Hotel of Doom."

I suppose that there is a chance that somebody in North Korea believed (or pretended to believe) that there was demand for a skyscraper that was 1,000 feet tall and housed 3,000 hotel rooms, but in reality, the real reason was that leadership thought it looked cool and that it would make for good propaganda.

To be fair, there was probably also some hope that it would spur demand and attract foreign investment. But it's still a case of just building whatever you want.