04 February 2009

Public toilet attracts tourists to small NZ town

The small, quiet town of Kawakawa in the Bay of Islands of New Zealand has put itself on the tourism map using its public toilets, reports the Earth Times.

The town of 1,300 inhabitants has been enjoying the limelight after a local Austrian-New Zealand immigrant artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser designed a Gaudi-style public toilet.

The toilet's floor's tiles are uneven, the windows are made of different coloured bottles set into cement and the walls are warped, and, in true Hundertwasser style, has a roof covered in overgrown grass (which mysteriously sprouted a marijuana plant at one stage). 

After travelling the world, Hundertwasser found sanctuary in the quiet township of Kawakawa and decided to permanently emigrate to New Zealand in 1974, affectionately calling it the "end of the world". 

According to the locals, the artist was trying to bring beauty to the aspects of life usually lacking in it, and was not looking to put Kawakawa on the map.

"It is only a toilet but it should show that even small things can bring beauty into our life," he asked his friends to spread around town.

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