B17_#164 // Underground Public Toilet // Jack Sweet 

The public toilet was once a space of escapism and release, an outlet for impulses unpalatable to mainstream society. Today our society has a guilty addiction to violence as a different means of release. Our culture saturated with simulations of bloodshed for entertainment and a 24 hour news cycle of constant crisis. The cube brings to the public attention the very real condition of London’s escalating knife violence. In the stairwell, a reconstructed crime scene tells the story of an incident. As our natural sense of voyeurism flares, we are unable to look away. Beneath the street the voyeur is met in each different underground space by the empty bedroom of an individual victim. Here, the very real violence inflicted on each family left behind is hammered home, the deeply personal space overlaid with the impersonal coldness of the corresponding 24 hour news report .     

Jack Sweet is a RIBA Part 1 Assistant at Grimshaw Architects, and Graduate from Newcastle University.