How Tokyo public toilets inspired 2025 Sony World Photography Award winner Ulana Switucha

On April 16, the Sony World Photography Awards announced the winners of its 18th edition at a ceremony in London, in the United Kingdom. The top prize in the architecture and design category went to Hong Kong-based Canadian photographer Ulana Switucha, who won with her series “The Tokyo Toilet Project”. Switucha did not capture bog-standard toilets – these were photos of 17 public toilets rebuilt between 2018 and 2023 as part of an urban redevelopment initiative in Japan’s capital city. Commissioned by the Shibuya municipal government and the Nippon Foundation, they were created by 16 architects and designers, including Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma. “I think the actual subject matter [is] the beauty and the art. It was a really good story to pull together in a series, and I was very privileged and honoured to have won the award with that set,” she says. “I went to all of these toilets. Each has a story behind it. There’s one that’s totally transparent and, when you lock the door, it becomes opaque; there’s another one that looks like an igloo, with voice-activated controls inside.” German filmmaker Wim Wenders, too, thought the revamped toilets were worthy of recognition – he made them the backdrop for his 2023 film Perfect Days. Switucha says she had not been aware of Wenders’ movie, which was nominated for best international feature film at the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, when she discovered the public toilets. She came across some of the designer Tokyo toilets during a 2024 visit to Japan and was immediately drawn to their unusual shape and placement, as well as how they embodied Japanese design and cutting-edge architecture. “There are a lot of design features within these public structures for people with disabilities, people with special needs, and for mothers with children,” she says. “They’re more than just beautiful buildings, they’re very useful buildings that invite the entire community.” She took most of the photos for her black-and-white series the same year. Switucha’s connection with Japan began in her teenage years, when she briefly lived there aged 18 because of her father’s work. That year he had given her her first camera, with which she climbed Mount Fuji. Photography has since been one of her biggest passions. Some years later, in 1995, she relocated to Hong Kong from Canada with her husband, and an opportunity presented itself for her to dive deeper into photography. “When I first moved to Hong Kong, I was really interested in travel photography because it is such a good base from which to travel around the region,” she says. “I was also exposed to street photography because I joined the Cathay Camera Club [an English-speaking photography group], through which I learned a lot about photography, and it was a way of exploring all about Hong Kong, its culture and its history.” Along with 12 fellow club members, her work was published in the 1999 book In the Heart of the Metropolis: Yaumatei and its People. It was a multi-year project with 300-plus black-and-white images, mostly captured in 1996 and 1997. “To someone learning photography, Hong Kong offers so much, from cityscape to seascape. Spending time here has been very important to me in developing skills and awareness of different styles.” She adds: “There are some really beautiful, creative buildings in Central, on the Kowloon side and by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where there are older buildings of the 1960s and 1970s style of architecture.” Since retiring after a career in finance about eight years ago, Switucha has been focusing even more of her energy on seeing the world through her camera lens. Although she does not confine herself to just one genre, she began photographing Hong Kong’s architecture during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the city largely closed its borders to the world. Once international travel restrictions were lifted, she rekindled her teenage connection to Japan and began shooting Japanese architecture, which is how her award-winning toilet series came about. “I was already shooting architecture in Tokyo, so [the toilets] were a natural extension. But they soon became a totally separate story because of what they were and their backgrounds,” she tells the Post. “I shoot in both colour and black and white depending on the subject matter, the lighting and the story I want to tell. As my photography has evolved, I prefer to shoot simple things and almost minimalistic landscapes, cityscapes and stories.” With black-and-white images, she likes to focus her lens on “lots of bold lines and lots of simplicity to the composition”. She adds that she chose it for the toilet project to focus on “their artistic impression” and “pull each building away from its very busy urban environment”. Switucha is currently working towards releasing her first photo book at the end of 2025 while expanding her “The 852” project, which is dedicated to the architecture of Hong Kong. “It’s still a work in progress. I have to shoot in the wintertime because it’s a black-and-white project, and it’s handy to have a blue sky to get really rich blacks in the sky. “Every winter, I’ll have a few months when I’ll go out at different times, find new angles and add a few buildings,” she says. Examples of these dramatic images can be seen on her website www.ulanaswitucha.com. “Through this photographic journey, there’s been a sort of path through various genres that interest me, so there’s no one particular style that I do. I wouldn’t call myself landscape photographer or an architectural photographer. I just enjoy creating work.”

How Tokyo public toilets inspired 2025 Sony World Photography Award winner Ulana Switucha

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Hong Kong-based Ulana Switucha won a 2025 Sony World Photography Award for her photos of Tokyo public toilets. She explains their draw

Hong Kong-based Ulana Switucha won a 2025 Sony World Photography Award for her photos of Tokyo public toilets. She explains their draw