New Zealand: Home of the World’s Only Gaudi Inspired Public Toilet

Public toilets are important if you are travelling. Their location, quality, and price are all important considerations. But they aren’t often the main reason to stop in the town, nor does the town often build a tourist industry around said toilets.

Unless the town is Kawakawa.

And the toilets were designed and even partly constructued by  Hundertwasser,  – an expatriot Australian artist – who gave his adopted hometown a very valuable, and practical piece of art. The only place I’ve ever seen anything slightly similar is some of Gaudi’s work on show in buildings and parks in Barcelona, Spain. To find this amount of style and colour, in a little rural backwater in Northland, New Zealand, is a bit of a surprise!

Kawakawa is pretty hard to miss – its just a few kilometers south of the Bay of Islands, and is well worth a quick look if you are in the area.

I put together a video of photos so you didn’t have to be embarassaed walking around a public toilet taking pictures! And no I didn’t go in the boy’s side – I sent my partner in! It would be a brave man that used those urinals during tourist season I can tell you.