The Most-Photographed Toilet In New Zealand

Come with me as I poop in New Zealand's most photographed public toilet, located in Kawakawa, near the top of the North Island. The Hundertwasser toilets are the final and only Southern Hemisphere project from reclusive artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. He was an artist who rejected straight lines, rationalism, function, and flat surfaces. An uneven floor, he said, is a melody to the feet.

To him, sterile industrial standards and prohibitions against personalizing one's space were forms of incarceration. He saw the human mind as a guest in nature. So in these toilets, where built, he asked that all the vegetation that used to populate the lot be planted on the roof. Hundertwasser loved feces. In fact, he wrote an entire manifesto called "The Holy Shit."

To him, there is no such thing as waste. To honor this philosophy, I left a fresh offering because we call the rich, organic, life-giving component of soil that's made of death, poop, and pee worked over by microorganisms: humus. And from the same root comes what we call ourselves: humans.