As we’ve written about rather extensively, Project Sammaan can be viewed as the implementation phase that builds off of insights gleaned from the year-long research study of India’s urban sanitation facilities, the “Potty Project”. Part of this study involved researching the architectural infrastructure of existing facilities to evaluate where problems were arising and what could be done to alleviate them.

One such area of exploration revolved around menstrual waste disposal and the options that were made available to women and girls. Unfortunately, we found that most facilities do not provide mechanisms for disposal of menstrual waste, nor do they provide communications interventions that foster awareness around sanitary practices regarding menstrual hygiene. As a result, many toilets are blocked by pads and towels women attempted to flush and the facility grounds are littered with used sanitary towels. In several instances, toilet booths were blocked and rendered useless due to sanitary pads being dumped in there.

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It’s that time again – to transform our architectural designs into tender documents.

Given our previous experience with the public toilet’s tender documents, we have learnt that developing a tender can be as challenging, if not much more, than the actual architectural design. Since it involves inputs from several consultants working on different elements of the design, it can lead to delays which can impact the final deadline for tender documents.

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Anagram Architects comprises the architectural design team of Project Samman and, as such, is responsible for providing detailed architectural designs for both Public and Community toilets in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. Our role involves understanding the existing sanitation scenario in the two cities and providing innovative design solutions to reduce the prevalent practice of open-defecation.

For this, initial site visits were made to understand the user preferences and reasons behind the failure of existing toilet designs. This was followed by a series of workshops, which helped in evolving a preliminary design framework.

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Project Sammaan has been going full-steam ahead for well over a year now. Several posts have been written over the last few months detailing the many challenges that have been faced thus far, so we thought it pertinent to review the achievements that the team is most proud of.

1. Facility design features were finalized.

After months of internal deliberations and community engagement exercises, the design features of the facilities were agreed upon, thereby allowing the individual facility designs to proceed. This is the first, most critical, component of the design process and one that seeks to shift the Potty Project findings from the conceptual phase and into practice.

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The construction vendors are identified through an exhaustive tendering process managed by Feedback Foundation. The tendering process is administered by the local governments and it is supported by the project team. It is important for the project team to understand the documents that need to be submitted along with the approvals required so that the process is completed within project’s timeline.

Feedback Foundation interfaced with the BMC engineering team to obtain more details on the tendering process and to review the tender documents that had already been prepared. They also collaborated with Anagram Architects on incorporating the facility design changes suggested by the engineering team. These efforts help to ensure that the process is completed in a timely manner with all requisite approvals in place.

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Potty Project provided a great deal of detail regarding issues around design that, if improved, could facilitate greater adoption rates of facilities by the communities they serve, and, consequently, reduce instances of open-defecation in these areas.

There will be two broad facility types:

1. Base Layer: facilities that will include only toilet stalls, menstrual waste incinerators, and handwashing stations.

2. Enhanced Layer: In addition to the base layer features, these facilities will also have bathing stalls, clothes-washing stations, and retail spaces.

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This is a series of posts that shares more about the project partners and the important roles each plays

At its most basic level, Project Sammaan will provide functional sanitation facilities to slum communities that desperately need them. As such, the insights and learnings that led to the development of the project’s interventions need to be translated into brick-and-mortar buildings, meaning that an architectural firm, particularly one with a keen sense of function as well as form, is vital.

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We are very happy to announce the results for the Open Innovation Challenge!

Amongst the entries received for the Architectural Design Challenge, there is one that stands out for its extremely sound contextual understanding and the effectiveness with which it translated insights into design directions.

The entry was submitted by RMA Architects and the Project Sammaan team was unanimous in selecting it as the winner. Besides responding to the brief extremely well, the entry provided new directions which could be incorporated in the architectural design’s next iteration.

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Notes and sketches after the initial brainstorm for our very own “Potty Lab”

We are setting up a toilet prototyping environment, playfully called the ‘Potty Lab’ in our Gurgaon studio.

This will enable us to test out ergonomics and other user-experience drivers for toilet & bathroom stalls within the sanitation facilities being designed by Project Sammaan. The results from the Potty Lab user-experience (UX) tests will inform architectural, product and component design, and detailing within different spaces in the new sanitation facility.

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Project Sammaan is a development project that seeks to create improved sanitation services for the urban poor residing in slums in India. The project is being driven by a consortium that consists of Quicksand Design Studio, Jameel Poverty Action Lab, & the city governments of two large cities in India. It is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF).

The name “Sammaan” stems from our belief that it’s very important to transform the user experience for these facilities from one heavily coated with shame to one of respect and dignity.

The project seeks to design & build 119 sanitation facilities in urban slums in India. Collectively, these facilities will have 1200+ toilets, bathrooms, spaces for washing clothes, and will benefit 60,000+ people. The project started in February 2012 and will last for 16-19 months at the end of which these toilets will be operational.

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