The Gropius House\u2019s actual on-site restrooms are not available to the dozens of visitors that stop by every day, given the property\u2019s age. Instead, according to Vin Cipolla, CEO of Historic New England, visitors had to use a single porta-potty propped up against the property\u2019s visitor\u2019s center. \u201cOur visitor experience team estimates that about 4,000 people a year use the porta-potty,\u201d Cipolla says. \u201cWe\u2019re considering this a somewhat urgent matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Last fall, Historic New England decided to share its bathroom design process with the public by turning it into a competition open to designers around the world. So how does one create a commode worthy of literally standing alongside Gropius\u2019 work? Strauss says the answer is all about materials.<\/p>\n The bathroom competition came with a list of guidelines and two main goals: to represent research and reflection on Bauhaus design principles, and to offer a creative design solution to a decades-long infrastructure problem.<\/p>\n Submissions needed to be situated as either an extension of the visitor\u2019s center, which is located inside what was once Gropius\u2019 garage, or a separate structure nearby. They had to be ADA accessible and include two toilets and two wash basins. <\/p>\n Finally, they needed to reflect the intense care and thought that Gropius put into the construction of the actual home and its grounds. From its Bauhaus furniture to its local construction materials, modern fixtures, and gleaming white exterior sandwiched snuggly in a transplanted copse of trees, every part of the Gropius House was deeply considered.<\/p>\n \u201cGropius House combined traditional elements of New England architecture\u2014wood, brick, and fieldstone\u2014with innovative materials including glass block, acoustical plaster, chrome banisters, and the latest technology in fixtures,” Historic New England\u2019s official webpage on the site reads, adding, “He designed the grounds of the home he built for his family in 1938 as carefully as the structure itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Strauss, who is a graduate of Harvard\u2019s School of Design and currently works as an assistant professor of architecture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, had already visited the Gropius House several times given her proximity to the site. Last year, on a bike trip with her husband (who also works as an architect) to the nearby Waldon Pond, she first learned about the bathroom competition. <\/p>\n \u201cMy husband was going to do the competition, and then he didn’t have time because he had too many other projects,\u201d Strauss says. \u201cI was like, \u2018I’ll give this a try.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Strauss\u2019 first step was to turn directly to Gropius\u2019 own work. She used his original sketches of the Gropius Home\u2019s garage to design the bones of a bathroom that would mimic the garage\u2019s exact dimensions, standing just a few feet off to the side\u2014like a modern reimagining of Gropius\u2019 original structure. <\/p>\n The bathroom is nearly square, with two equally-sized rooms on either side of a central divider, similar to something that one might find at the start of a hiking trail. Strauss says she was inspired by the \u201cclassic outhouse typology\u201d for the building\u2019s lay-out, but its similarities to a toilet in the woods end there. <\/p>\n Nearly all of the materials making up the bathroom are pulled directly from the same sources as the Gropius house: the outside, for example, is clad in layers of fieldstone, which serves as the house\u2019s foundations; the ripple glass in the transom windows also appears in the house; and even the simple white tiles in the stalls are recreations of the original bathroom tile.\u00a0<\/p>\n Strauss\u2019 Bauhaus bathroom is so simple and organic that it almost slides into the background of the natural wooded environment. Cipolla says that, amidst hundreds of other designs his team received, the competition judges were continuously drawn back to her humble-yet-grounded approach. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s quiet\u2014it doesn’t call attention to itself,\u201d Cipolla says. \u201cIt sits within the fabric of the site in a rather unobtrusive way, drawing on vernacular materials, a naturalistic solution, and reflecting the materiality that already exists.\u201d Now that the competition is closed, he adds, the Historic New England team hopes to get construction underway within the next couple of years and finally put the porta-potty to rest.<\/p>\n Strauss\u2019 bathroom is evidence that, in the hands of a dedicated artist, even something as quotidien as a pair of stalls can become a reflection of design history.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I hope the spirit of my interpretation of Bauhaus design captures is taking materials that are ordinary or industrial that are not necessarily luxury, and, with careful design, elevating them so that everyone has access to beautiful and functional design,\u201d Strauss says.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit,w_1024\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/05\/i-2-91537825-bauhaus-bathroom.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit,w_1024\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/05\/04-91537825-bauhaus-bathroom.jpg\")
A bathroom on a famous site<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit,w_1024\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/05\/02-91537825-bauhaus-bathroom.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit,w_1024\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/05\/03-91537825-bauhaus-bathroom.jpg\")
A humble\u2014yet design-forward\u2014commode<\/h2>\n