When the architect Laura Clark told friends and family that she was planning to live in an underground former public lavatory in south-east London, responses ranged from hilarity to horror along with quite a few polite inquiries as to the state of her mental health. ‘I was known as Laura Toilets for a while,’ she says laughing. And there were moments during the project’s lengthy gestation when Clark questioned her own sanity. For a relatively small renovation, little more than 600sq ft, the project faced more than its share of planning setbacks.
Clark first spotted the loos – with their chained gates and boarded-up stairwells – in 2005, when she moved to London, having completed her degree at the Glasgow School of Art. It was exactly the sort of challenge that the young architect was looking for. ‘I’ve always loved the idea of micro-regeneration,’ she explains. ‘For me that’s about saving sites with an interesting history, but which have been abandoned and forgotten.’ Her initial plan was to transform the two adjacent ex-lavatories (men’s and women’s) into a bar or tiny cinema. ‘I pictured it as something quirky and fun that would breathe life back into a neglected part of the local landscape,’ she says.
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