Take a dump in a masterpiece: In Italy even the porta-potties are art

I am a huge fan of these portapotties by Sebach. There’s one on the highway between Firenze Sud and Firenze Certosa, but we are never going slow enough to photograph it, and it’s partially blocked by the divider. It has the Piero della Francesca portrait of the Duke of Urbino on the side.

I randomly discovered these photos on the Sterpaia website, a creativity farm and communications company based near Pisa in Tuscany. The artistic “Dream Toilet” is designed by Lorenzo Pentassuglia and Cecilia Morassi, students of the faculty of Architecture in Trieste and winners of a world-wide contest that was put out by Sebach and Sterpaia for the perfect chemical toilet. The contest, held in 2007, had a 5000 euro prize. I’m sure that the client paid much more than this to Sterpaia.

The slogan? Well, there isn’t one, but as a creative in advertising myself I suggest “Take a dump in a masterpiece”.

While the “Dream Toilet” got SOME press in Italian blogs, and none in English-language blogs, the related project “Flush the Fashion: Elegance in Toilet Paper” received virtually no mentions despite the creativity of students from the Academia Italiana of Art, Fashion, and Design who created high fashion clothing out of toilet paper. Kinda puts a whole new twist on “toilet papering” a place or person.