How do you design a bathroom for the godfather of the Bauhaus? Keep it simple

FastCompany: In November 2025, nearly 300 designers began work on their submissions for the competition of a lifetime: the opportunity to design a bathroom for one of the most famous architects of all time. The competition called on designers to imagine a new public restroom for the Gropius House, the family home of the late German architect Walter Gropius . Gropius founded the famed art and design school the Bauhaus (1919–1933), which defined an entire era of modernist design through its innovative approach to technology and almost reverent obsession with materials.

His self-designed home is now preserved and made open to the public by Historic New England, a non-profit that oversees 127 privately owned historic properties in New England. On May 7, the organization announced Isabel Strauss as the winner of its call for submissions. [Photo: courtesy of Historic New England] The Gropius House’s actual on-site restrooms are not available to the dozens of visitors that stop by every day, given the property’s age. Instead, according to Vin Cipolla, CEO of Historic New England, visitors had to use a single porta-potty propped up against the property’s visitor’s center.

“Our visitor experience team estimates that about 4,000 people a year use the porta-potty,” Cipolla says. “We’re considering this a somewhat urgent matter.” The current facilities. [Photo: courtesy of Historic New England] 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’ work? Strauss says the answer is all about materials.

[Rendering: Isabel Strauss/courtesy of Historic New England] A bathroom on a famous site 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. Submissions needed to be situated as either an extension of the visitor’s center, which is located inside what was once Gropius’ garage, or a separate structure nearby. They had to be ADA accessible and include two toilets and two wash basins.

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.

[Image: Isabel Strauss/courtesy of Historic New England] “Gropius House combined traditional elements of New England architecture—wood, brick, and fieldstone—with innovative materials including glass block, acoustical plaster, chrome banisters, and the latest technology in fixtures,” Historic New England’s 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.” Strauss, who is a graduate of Harvard’s School of Design and currently works as an assistant professor of architecture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, had already visited the

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The article discusses a specific design competition related to a historical figure, which has moderate significance for the brand/design industry, while offering a blend of traditional and modern design principles that are relevant but not groundbreaking.