Designed for Fun
SPACE SAVING DESIGN IN A CHILDREN'S BATHROOM Greek Revival Townhouse - Greenwich Village, New York
Designer Coco Kanakis, Principal of Spaciality Inc. in Bedford Corners, New York, used a Geberit in-wall toilet system to maximize the space and create a fun young boys’ bathroom. The “urban skateboard park” is one of six bathrooms in a 5000-square-foot, Greek Revival townhouse in Greenwich Village. The design was made possible by the Geberit system.
The Challenge
When one of Coco Kanakis’ clients moved from a contemporary downtown loft to an 1800s Greenwich Village townhouse on the west side of lower Manhattan, they looked to Kanakis to reinstate their new home’s former grandeur while incorporating modern conveniences. This involved reconfiguring the interior spaces to accommodate the client’s large family, which was not an easy task given that the building façade needed to be preserved as a part of the largest historic district in New York City.
Part of the challenge was to design a fun-filled, practical, eco-conscious bathroom for the owners’ two young boys while maximizing the 5´ x 8´ footprint. This entailed relocating all the plumbing, providing plenty of storage, and sourcing products with easy cleanup and maintenance.
The Solution
Kanakis settled on an “urban skateboard park” theme for the space. To capture the right style, she incorporated design elements typical of an open-air skateboard park, like concrete-look floor tile, replica floodlights, black asphalt-colored accessories, green faucets, and wood wall tile. Unique accent tile with printed skateboard patterns provided the finishing touch. The overall layout wouldn’t have been possible without a Geberit Concealed Tank and Carrier system with a wall-hung toilet, a go-to for Dutch-born Kanakis. Geberit in-wall units are standard in any European bathroom.
“One of the features of the Geberit system is the adjustable legs,” says Kanakis. “The historic townhouse floors were out-of-level, with variances of 2 inches or more from one end of the room to the other. In this bathroom, the entire floor had to be built up to make the floor level and safe for wet-room use. The adjustable legs on the Geberit carrier frame allowed us to compensate for the floor variances that were discovered during construction. The adjustable, lowered toilet seat height also adds comfort for the boys.”
The Geberit system removes the toilet tank from the bathroom and tucks it safely inside the wall. This, combined with the wall-hung 60-inch vanity, added greatly to the ‘skateboard park’ sense of space. A wall-hung toilet makes it easy to maneuver in the small bathroom while being highly functional, whimsical, and hygienic. A special finish on all the ceramics prevents dirt from sticking, making cleanup easy and keeping the bathroom cleaner for longer.
The final touch is a Geberit Sigma50 water-saving dual-flush plate, a functional accent that complements the contemporary appeal of the bathroom. The Sigma50 model Kanakis chose is made of die-cast zinc with a jet-black plastic inlay. Dual-flush buttons of 1.6 GPF (6 LPF) for solids or 0.8 GPF (3 LPF) for liquids give an effective flush volume of 1.1 GPF (4 LPF) and save thousands of gallons of water per year when compared with a standard toilet. All the working parts of the Geberit in-wall system are accessible behind the flush plate.
“The dual-flush actuator aligns with the client’s environmentally-conscious mandate and was used in the remaining bathrooms as well,” says Kanakis, who also designed the owner’s previous home, a New York City loft, using the Geberit in-wall system. Additional ‘green’ features in the bathroom are low-flow faucets and valves and LED lighting.