Basalt and Magenta

Magenta Outhouse is an 11-square-metre outdoor bathing pavilion, sitting among a cluster of basalt boulders on the Bulga Plateau, on Biripi Country. Designed and built by Atelier Marks Gaal, its skeletal frame was fabricated by local metalworkers from scrap metal found on the farm, and downgraded low-carbon steel was folded into a winged canopy. The finer details are equally resourceful: a handcrafted charcoal clay ceramic basin by Georgia Stevenson Ceramics, with copper and brass offcuts worked into the junctions. The deck, in locally milled blackbutt, is supported on concrete blocks reused from a 1960s tank stand, the blocks sitting on compacted gravel to avoid excavation and new concrete. Magenta screens wrap a composting toilet, carefully sized and positioned to make use of each polycarbonate sheet in full, and subtly see-through so as to let nature call to you as you answer its call. And, it’s just a hop, skip and jump over a mossy boulder to the open-air bath (an old concrete watering trough).

Inside issue 111 – Grab the issue here.