30
PROJECT
Elevating the humble loo block
By Eamonn Ryan
It is estimated that by 2025 half of the world’s population will
be living in water-stressed areas due to growing population.
Employing Enviro Loo sanitary technology, construction
technology company BOXA and its partners have installed a
fixed, off-grid toilet facility at Victoria Yards, a landmark urban
regeneration project, near the Johannesburg CBD.
The combination of these new building and off-grid
technologies is a world first, says BOXA founder
Anthony Lewis, with the intention having been to
develop the prototype and thereafter pilot the facility
for a broader roll out. BOXA is elevating the humble
loo block – literally, 50cm off the ground. It’s also
rather pretty and certainly even today’s concerned
generation of environment warriors wouldn’t be able
to pick holes in its green attributes.
Victoria Yards is a sprawling precinct of old warehouses,
steamworks, laundries and historical buildings extending to
some 20 000m 2 , which have been lovingly repurposed and
restored as part of a broader urban regeneration project
called Makers’ Valley which spans the Jukskei River. Situated
over the road from the Nando’s global headquarters and
developed by Group44, it is entirely off-grid and literally
blossoming as its activities include urban farming. It is a
socio-economic project with a commercial twist, which was
visited by the Duchess of Sussex on the Sussex’s 2019 visit
“The
combination
of these new
building
and off-grid
technologies
is a world
first.”
The BOXA ablution facility.
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March 2020 Volume 26 I Number 01