Over the January 31-February 3 weekend, the 2025 AIA Virginia Prize competition kicked off with students around Virginia. We were thrilled to have William & Mary join competitors from Hampton University, UVA, Virginia Tech (Blacksburg and the WAAC), and JMU in addressing the challenge.
The first round of submissions is juried at the university level and up to 10 finalists from each school will be sent to be juried at the state level by the competition jury. We look forward to sharing and celebrating the results.
2025 AIA Virginia Prize Challenge
Background
Inequality in access to public toilets has taken on an increasingly urban/suburban divide. In suburbia, bathrooms in privately owned businesses such as gas stations, fast-food restaurants, or big-box stores stand in for public toilets. In contrast, fewer establishments in the city allow access to toilet facilities, particularly for non-customers. Disparate constituencies such as cab or delivery drivers, unhoused individuals, or those with medical conditions often find themselves in urgent need of toilet facilities while away from home. Many have pointed out the way in which public toilet access historically has facilitated participation in public life for women, workers, tourists, and many others. More recently, bathroom access has become a lightning rod for controversies over the inclusion of trans and nonbinary people in the public sphere. Today, cities like Tokyo are reinvesting in the public toilet, or the “comfort station,” as a form of branding and placemaking, often including additional amenities such as bike racks, benches, shade. Most importantly, they offer those in need a safe, clean, comfortable, and often beautiful facility designed with provocative forms, materials, or graphics.
The Challenge
Design a public toilet for the local municipality of Alexandria, Virginia in the vicinity of the King Street Metro Station. The facility should serve to support and further the city’s identity and image, creating an environment that elevates the program into an architecturally significant design. It must accommodate three to five visitors at a time and include a custodial service room. The design should consider the needs of the following: the differently abled, infants, young children, and their caregivers, the full spectrum fo gender identity, environmentally sustainable features and/or technologies, and potential suitability for prototyping.
About the AIA Virginia Prize
Conducted simultaneously at Hampton University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech (both in Blacksburg and at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center/the WAAC), William & Mary, and James Madison University, the competition is a design charrette that engages students across the Commonwealth. Students receive the competition program on a Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. They work over the weekend to create a design solution and submit it by 9 a.m. the following Monday.
Launched in 1980, the competition is intended to promote collaboration between the profession, students, and professors in Virginia.
Development of the competition brief rotates between the schools annually — the 2025 Prize challenge was developed by the WAAC.