Tucked away on the sixth floor of a Nanjing shopping mall is one of the fanciest, most impressive public bathrooms in the world. To some, it is the world’s most beautiful public bathroom.
Designed by X+Living, a Shanghai-based architecture firm, the bathroom on the sixth floor of the Deji Plaza shopping mall in Nanjing, China makes you feel like you accidentally walked into a whimsical palace. That’s not usually the feeling you get from most public bathrooms… It starts out with a long corridor lined with plants coming out of the walls. This part of the bathroom was designed as “an immersive walk-through-a-garden experience”, but it’s hard to focus on the green decor with dozens of giant lamps shining on you from above, and with the light reflecting on the glossy floor.
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At the end of this whimsical corridor is a lounge area complete with a sofa inspired by the petals of a flower. It’s here that visitors who don’t need to use the restroom can wait for their friends. The men’s and women’s facilities feature custom decor, complete with fountain-inspired washbasins positioned at different heights to make them reachable by both children and adults.
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“A washroom in a shopping mall is a public space open to everyone. It accommodates people in their busy urban life and provides them a space to take a break or re-organize themselves,” designer Li Xiang said. “During the design process, I don’t particularly want to design it as a functional-only space, therefore, we suggested putting more emphasis on the design of the washroom, so as to reflect humanistic care in unexpected corners of the shopping mall. That’s why we came up with the concept of Sanctuary Garden.”
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There is so much going on in this bathroom, from abstract geometry and shapes inspired by flowers and insects to plush vanity chairs and lots of LED strips, that it’s hard to really pin down the design style, but it’s definitely very different than what we’re used to seeing in shopping mall bathrooms and public bathrooms in general.
Fun fact, China is also home to one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world, Dujiangyan Zhongshuge, a bookstore in Dujiangyan.
