Public Urinals of Vienna

This historic public installation may be found in central Vienna, Austria

Filed under: Top 1,000 Urinals | Public Facilities
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These photos were taken by JC in 2012 and posted on his site, we are reproducing them here with his permission. JC writes: "I’ve never posted pictures related to human excretion before, but Adolf Loos’s public toilets in Vienna, located near the cathedral, are what all public toilets should be—works of art. Loos (1870-1933) was an important Art Nouveau (in German, “Jugendstil”) architect in Vienna, and my guidebook called attention to his remarkable toilets. (It’s hard to find those toilets on the Internet, for you can imagine what you get when you Google “Loos toilets”.)

"It took me a while to find the facilities (they’re not well marked), and even longer—several visits, in fact—to be able to photograph all the important parts when nobody was using them. So, for better or worse, here they are."

These last two photos were taken in 2013 and sent in by KW. He writes: "You already have a couple of photographs of the public urinals in Vienna designed by Loos. The previous contributor said they were hard to find, but the fine Jungenstil sign at the entrance, in the pedestrian street named Graben, proclaims their location very clearly. What's also interesting is that these are very early examples of waterless urinals, now increasingly common. My attempt at translating the sign above the urinals: "1883 Patent Oil Urinals, odorless without flushing*. We request the greatest cleanliness and arrangement of one's clothing in this facility."

* Not strictly true!"