Stone Relief: reclaiming purpose with Studio Weave’s new stone toilet block in Maida Vale, London

A small but vital constituent of a successful urban plan and one often overlooked or entirely missing, is the public toilet. The lack of accessible toilets disproportionately affects those that need them most. Studio Weave are set to change all of that with a small but powerful project that will see the humble public toilet step into the light. That the recently completed toilet in Maida Vale for Westminster City Council is sustainably built in structural stone is another story to be celebrated. 

London based practice Studio Weave are the authors of a wide range of projects, covering cultural, public realm and residential, all linked by a sensitivity to materials use. The studio was interested in working with stone, seeking to learn more about the technical realities and motivated by what practice co-director Eddie Blake refers to as ‘the way stone carries meaning’.

Eddie visited the Stonemasonry Company in Stamford, Lincolnshire with Studio Weave Senior Architect Esther Escribiano, having just met with the clients and persuaded them that because the site in Maida Vale was surrounded by buildings with big stone components that they were going to use natural stone. Eddie described how they talked through why the use of stone was financially efficient, noting that “the potential for high quality was there for a significant, substantial place with this insubstantial building.”

Creative Director of the Stonemasonry Company Pierre Bidaud showed Eddie and Esther a selection of limestone before revealing pink and blue granite stone reclaimed from the demolished 100 Liverpool Street, one of Broadgate’s earliest buildings, designed by the late Peter Foggo at Arup in the 1980s. The stone had been recovered by CED Stone and purchased by the Stonemasonry Company. Blake describes how he and Esther looked at each other and agreed that this was the stone they had to use. “This beautiful stone, the feldspar, was glistening in the sharp autumnal light” Eddie explains, adding “this is a perfect expression of what our practice has started to call ‘deep reuse’". The stone was then cut from the original 70 inch sections to solid 80mm thick panels. 

The final selection of stone included Norwegian Larvikite from Lundhs leftover from an architectural project in London and the granite from CED Stone. For the architects the project then became one centred on composition led by the stone rather than a perfected architectural vision about how the stone should function. The studio set about working with the big chunks of stone in the most efficient way, developed through prototyping with project engineers Webb Yates. The building is a carapace, where a structural stone structure sits over three off-the-shelf toilets, formed around the idea that the toilets can be replaced, while keeping the structural carapace. This guarantees the longevity of the toilets, as Eddie explains “if the technology changes the interior, the hard stuff remains.” 

By working with the stone, an aesthetic sensibility began to emerge which felt to Eddie and Esther like a rocky seaside on the West Coast. This led to the idea of planting the stone using existing cracks to house sea thrift, a salt tolerant evergreen perennial. Boulders adjacent to the building were drilled with holes to enable further planting, the plants becoming part of the architecture. A small planted garden surrounding the block adds to the effect. 

Cost efficiency was key to deciding how the stone was cut with textures of the reclaimed stone showing different methods of stone processing; from smooth fair-faced stone to finishes that reveal the splitting and slicing of the material. Celebrating the material and its constraints changed the design completely during the design journey. Eddie describes the process; “it’s the juxtaposition which gives the projects its vitality, through friction. The process of working with stonemasons who are so in the weeds of what stone means and the narrative of stone, that's what has driven it.”

Eddie describes this material first approach as; "pushing at the edges of convention because it changes the design, so instead of designing something and then going back to who is solving what, using the material itself and the way it's assembled to provide a space.

Pierre adds, “the architects were very relaxed with the organisation of the facade because they knew that they had the constraint of block size.”

Eddie agrees, “we focused on the composition, using these chunks of stone. The footprint was absolutely constrained by below ground conditions. There's a big gas main and there's the water pipe so essentially you have to build the block to a certain footprint. Accepting this allowed us to ask how we make these big blocks happen in the most satisfying way.”

While the composition was aesthetically driven, other constraints alongside block size were door height and the size of the post tension beams. L-shaped stones provided internal beams while lintels over the doors express the stone beams. 

The stone was prefabricated and dry-laid with the stone laid out to check for accuracy prior to assembly on site. This process ensured there was no need to recut stone at the site - important in terms of efficiency; reducing disruption and labour costs. 

For Studio Weave, this small but powerful project shows how the humble toilet can elevate the city’s surroundings at the same time as offering a valuable and necessary addition to the public realm. They would like to see the project replicated in towns across the UK. Visitors to the toilet will encounter not only relief, but beauty, sustainability and a homage to the power of material reuse.