The Barcelona Toilet

When Mies van der Rohe was asked if there was any Japanese influence in his work, he replied: "I have never seen any Japanese architecture. I have never been to Japan. In the office, we do things by trying to reason. It is possible that the Japanese also do it that way."

I have never been to Japan either, although I recognize the fascination it generates in me. I was recently reminded of it after seeing Wim Wenders' film Perfect Days. Like Lou Reed's song ---with which it shares a title and which is part of the soundtrack--- it talks about how we can find the best of life in the small things of every day.

The protagonist is a middle-aged man who professionally cleans public restrooms in Shibuya (Tokyo). But when I talk about cleaning public restrooms, I'm not talking about hosing down cold kiosks installed on the street, as we might be used to here. The delicacy with which he, Hirayama, cleans the restrooms is more akin to a religious ritual than a cleaning protocol. He replaces the Kärcher with small brushes and uses mirrors to ensure every corner is perfect. Furthermore, he accompanies this desire to do the task as best as possible with an attentive and generous attitude towards the rest of the world.

Doing things well, being kind, and going through life with a good soundtrack can be the recipe for making a normal day a perfect day.

One of the things that most amazed me is how the director brings to light what for me is, without a doubt, the other protagonist of the film, The Tokyo Toilet project by the Nippon Foundation. For this project, different architects and designers were invited to conceive public restrooms to be installed in the city. The result is 17 facilities distributed across different streets, designed by architects such as Shigeru Ban, Tadao Ando, Toyo Ito ---all three Pritzker Prize winners--- or designers like NIGO and Marc Newson. All projects can be viewed on their website.

If, like the protagonist of the film, we can find beauty in everyday things, we should also be able to find it in public spaces, even in bathrooms. It's that idea that fascinates me about Japanese culture. The Japanese thinker Soetsu Yanagi (1881-1961) wrote in The Beauty of Everyday Things (Gustavo Gili) that "the ultimate test of a country's cultural level should be the standard of living of ordinary people, and that standard is manifested in the everyday objects used." It is no coincidence that a country that is not among the ten most populated countries in the world is the one that can exhibit the most Pritzker Prizes, a total of nine since the first edition of the award in 1979. How envious to be part of a society that places beauty and functionality at the center of daily life.

Regarding that idea of building environments that make us better, Martin Heidegger spoke of "poetic dwelling." A way of being in the world that we have built that invites reflection, contemplation, and connects us with everything around us. An environment in harmony where, with attention to details and materials, the aesthetic ---and spiritual--- experience of the space is elevated. I don't know if Heidegger ever visited Japan, but I believe that the approach taken by Japanese architecture and culture has much of that.

In contrast, in our country, we have traditionally opted to install stainless steel cubes as public bathrooms ---in the best of cases--- with cold interior equipment, yes, with the possibility of cleaning them with a hose. Of course, we are also lucky if the tourist ---or the local--- decides to use it and not relieve themselves on the first corner they find. It's not just the possibility of urinating in a work by a Pritzker laureate that makes me envious (I've done it in the Palau Sant Jordi, a work by the also Japanese Pritzker Arata Isozaki), it is, above all, the luck of living in an environment that they care for and that cares for them that I envy.

I confess that I feel a deep envy for this man who is happy with few things, and I cannot help but wonder how different his life would be if instead of cleaning the Shibuya bathrooms, he had to clean the public bathrooms of Barcelona.

I confess that I feel a deep envy for this man who is happy with few things, and I can't help but wonder how different his life would be if, instead of cleaning the bathrooms of Shibuya, he had to clean the public bathrooms of Barcelona. A radically different experience that reminds us that good design is not just for the elites.

In Perfect Days, they tell us that a simple life, an omelet, a cassette tape, a clean bathroom, and working in a pleasant environment can make a normal day a perfect day. I know that we Mediterraneans, we Latins... have drunk from another tradition, but I can't get out of my head why, while importing Dragon Ball or sushi, we haven't also imported a way of understanding the everyday that would make us all a little better.