Practical when a pressing need arises, Paris’s public toilets, scattered throughout the city, don’t have the best of reputations… Considered, and sometimes rightly so, too dirty and outdated, they don’t always get good press. That’s why the municipality has launched a major campaign to modernize its sanitary facilities, which began to be deployed in 2024.
Images: Paris’ future public toilets unveiled
Free of charge since 2006 and welcoming nearly 15 million people a year, 435 public toilets are counted in the capital’s bays. In February, work began on replacing all of them, as announced by the mayor’s office in November 2022, before unveiling its modernization plan in detail. The contract has once again been awarded to JCDecaux, and the design to architect Patrick Jouin.
More aesthetically pleasing, these new sanisettes will be equipped with a drinking water fountain on the outside and a urinal at the back, almost doubling the number of simultaneous users (from 435 to 870). As for cleanliness, the main shortcoming of the current facilities, the floor of the future toilets will be raised and sensors installed to target waste directly.
Ecological impact is also a fundamental consideration in the design of these new toilets, which have been designed to reduce their water consumption by almost two-thirds compared with the previous model, and their electricity consumption by one-third. A great promise, which will also lead to a significant reduction in the waiting time between each use.
As far as the deployment schedule for these new-generation toilets is concerned, it should be noted that some 150 toilets were installed prior to the Olympic Games. As part of the second phase of work, the following 285 toilets should all be installed by May 2025.