OPINION: Poo? Nah. (The Terrifying Toilets in Ngā Mokopuna)

By James Hornsby

Ngā Mokopuna is the hot new eco-warrior kid on campus. If you're not familiar with the building, it "aspires" to meet a Living Building Certification from the International Living Futures Institute. Part of this means that it was designed to be self-sufficient, generating all its own electricity, collecting all fresh water, and managing its own waste.

I have no experience dealing with living buildings, or their aspirations, but I can boast to having many years of experience in using a bathroom. In fact, I can confidently say that I have used a bathroom every day since I was old enough to use one.

The Ngā Mokopuna wharepaku are just as experimental as the rest of the building. The first thing you'll notice about these futuristic faeces flushers is how the hole in their bowl is awfully small. The bowl is also unusually shaped, with a porcelain hood that curves over the cave-like opening through which all things must flow. 

That's because these are more like airplane toilets than your conventional shitter. As the signs above the toilets read, these are vacuum flushing, and you can tell the difference. When you flush these, they explode in a powerful rushing roar guaranteed to terrify. I say this as someone who recently stayed in a hotel with toilets so powerful that, upon flushing, the ensuing whirlpool would splash over the rim and onto the tiled floor.

Things in a Ngā Mokopuna bathroom only get worse from there unfortunately. For starters, the flush button is not located in the normal place, in fact the flush is so hard to find that they’ve had to add paper signs pointing towards the button, which is located behind the bowl on the back of the seat. The problem is, to press the button, you need to lean right down next to the bowl, which then explodes with its vacuum suction, right in your unsuspecting face. Aside from being a potential accessibility issue, these hard to find buttons are less than convenient, and their proximity to the bowl feels unsanitary.

As an environmentally conscious building, the vacuum loos will use less water than their traditional counterparts, similarly the light-switches are on a ten minute timer to save energy. Anyone who has spent too much time in the bathrooms next to Louis' Café will know that their motion sensitive lights can plunge you into darkness if you sit still for too long, although at least you can wave your arms to turn them back on again. Not like those in Ngā Mokopuna, as the switch can't be reached while sitting on the porcelain. Ten minutes might sound like a lot, but if you're someone who likes to have a little protracted poo time, or a bare-assed scroll on the socials, then ten minutes can fly by pretty quick. Or worse, maybe you've just entered the bathroom after someone else used it, as I did on my first time, only to have the lights flicker off at the worst moment possible.

All this is to say that I really admire what Ngā Mokopuna stands for, and what it is trying to achieve. Climate action and sustainability have never been—and should not be—about convenience or following traditional norms... I just wish that didn't come at the cost of me trapped in the pitch black with my pants around my ankles.