Winners Announced for “Little Big Loo 2025 Architecture Competition”

The Little Big Loo Competition invited visionary ideas aimed at redefining public sanitation by challenging conventional perceptions of public toilets. The initiative sought innovative, efficient, and impactful design solutions to address the efficiency of public restrooms, their sanitary facilities, spatial distribution and mainly, privacy and comfort, which ultimately improve peoples’ lives.

The competition challenged its participants to rethink and re-imagine the conventions of public toilets and encourage the best possible solutions for this serious problem scenario, which is plaguing our World. Participants were required to design a public toilet that should be capable of catering a footfall of 250-500 people, with the total built-up area not exceeding 150 sq. m., while integrating spaces that should be visualized as a prime component in the making of a community that develops holistically; a community that is competent in social, economic and educational terms.”

The esteemed jury for judging this competition consisted of Bruno Santa Cecilia (Arquitetos Associados), Carla Osorio & Mario Avila (Espacio 18 Arquitectura), Catherine Ranger (MGS Architects), Chen Lin (Shulin Architectural Design), Dipen Gada (DG Associates), Doan Thanh Ha (H&P Architects), Eduardo Sainz (SAINZ arquitetura), Hoang Thuc Hao (1+1>2 Architects), Ngô Việt Khánh Duy (23o5studio), Widhi Nugroho (Studio WNA).

The top three winners and Best Student were awarded total prize money of $4,500 while ten entries received Honorable Mentions. Here are the winning entries. The full result for the competition the Little Big Loo 2025 Architecture Competition can be found at – https://volumezerocompetitions.com/competitions/result/little-big-loo-2025 

In Kawatuna, on the outskirts of Palu, over 400 scavengers survice on what the city discards. The 8-hectare landfill receives about 120 tons of garbage daily, shaping the landscape they call home. Most live in fragile tin shelters, where 65% lack safe toilets and 80% depend on open defecation or polluted drains. Defecating is often means walking half kilometer to a shared, contaminated source – a hardship inherited through generations. Here, filth has become familiarity; the line between waste and living has long blurred. Cleanliness is a rarity, and survival has birthed a culture of neglected sanitation – not by choice, but by necessity. It is a cycle and a trap that is normalized by them, where poverty, pollution, and invisibility intertwine. 

Seeing the Unseen breathes empathy, every element reclaims what was once discarded – and act of care that turns neglect into possibility. Rainwater turns into a resource, light filters softly through recycled panels, and bottles, and crates shape a shared space for the community. It invites us to look again, beyond the stigma, to realize that design, at its truest form, is not about what we build, but what we choose to believe.  

The rural areas of India are mainly characterized by concentrated residential groups surrounded by vast fields. Farmers leave home early and return late. Mostly, they are active in places far from home such as fields, markets and roads. Whether they rest, defecate or gather, all these activities occur during breaks in their work. This is why defecating in the open air is a common occurrence in the village. We took the daily life scenes of local rural region as the basis for our research and chose a field near the road as the design site. Create a safe settlement for residents in a simple, efficient, and continuously extensible and replicable form. 

Our design responds to these rural patterns by selecting a roadside field for a community facility that is simple, efficient, and easily replicable. The scheme provides a safe gathering space aligned with local rhythms. 

In the white salt plains of Gujarat’s Little Rann of Kutch, Agariya women harvest salt by hand yet live without safe sanitation. Under the harsh sun and saline wind, their labor remains invisible, their bodies without refuge. 

Using salt bricks, bamboo frames, and jute fabric, it creates modular spaces that shift from private (toilets, bathing) to semi-private (child care) to open (rest, gathering).

Each layer restores dignity – from body to mind to community. Light, reversible, and built from the land itself, the shelter follows the salt’s seasonal rhythm, offering women safety, comfort, and visibility within the landscape they sustain.

Located in Luxor, southern Egypt, the FLOW unites a public restroom with a vibrant community space. Though rich in history, Luxor’s social fabric is fraying due to a lack of shared meeting places. The FLOW offers an inviting hub where people can gather and connect. It also addresses another pressing issue – poor hygiene. By displaying its water filtration process, the FLOW raises awareness about the vital importance of clean water for the community.