Mouldering privy as agent of change. From the unknown, misperception, consumption, pollution, processed food, vulnerability, “toilet” TO the known, experience, elimination, biodegradation, wood chips. microbial and fungal action, safety, and “privy” TO memory, post-perception, resource, harmlessness, carbon sequestration, bioavailability, wellbeing, “sanctuary”.
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Xingyue Huang and Amy Brooks Thornton
We are liberating the conventional perception of the back-country toilet, through literal and imaginative documentary design, exploring how the object is related to its environment and how it is experienced.
Our case study is a mouldering privy in Hubbard Park, Montpelier, Vermont designed by faculty Steve Badanes, Jim Adamson, and Bill Bialosky, and their students at the Yestermorrow Design School in Waitsfield, Vermont. Privy comes from Latin, privatus, meaning “private.”
By composting waste with carbon bulking agents such as fine wood chips or dried leaves, mouldering privies overcome multiple challenges, yet they are still relatively unknown or distasteful to most. Thus, while we reimagine the mouldering privy, we also illustrate the object of the mouldering privy to help those who misunderstand it or who need to visualize it is a place of beauty and safety. By situating it within biogeochemical, ,geographical, historical, psychological and social context, we imagine it as agent of change.
Human waste or “night soil”, once valued and collected for use as fertilizer, is still removed by hand from toilet pits in poorer areas of the world. Port-O-Potty toilets widely used for public events, parks, and construction sites rely on toxic chemicals and regular removal of the waste which requires sanitizing processes at a facility. By composting waste onsite, the collection process is much safer and the end product usable sooner.
Young women, particularly in areas of India, are exposed to sexual violence at nighttime due to lack of private spaces for daytime excretion. Inexpensive mouldering privies which run about $500 to build, provide these women with privacy, safety, and wellbeing.
Our modern toilets use potable water which should be used for drinking, not flushing our waste.
Mouldering privies decompose pathogens, convert waste into bioavailable nutrients for plants, and sequester carbon.
In our case study, the privy creates a private experience within the forest. It engages the senses through the smell of wood chips, the thermally active surface and warm colors of seasoned softwoods, and the sounds of forest and soft shafts of light filtering through screened and corrugated plastic windows. The privy becomes part of the forest.
The multimedia installation invites the viewer to immerse in the audiovisual, haptic, scientific, historical and imaginative experience.
The installation includes experiential natural sound video, boxes made from recycled pine barn flooring holding site materials, imaginative documentary illustrations, rubbings, and site maps at different scales.