These photo-tiles turn a bathroom into an apartment block and bring the outdoors inside

Unless you develop film at home, the bathroom isn’t really a place you’d connect with photography. But creative guys from Gyva Grafika brought photography into a bathroom in a really unique way. They used photos and tiles to “bring outside – inside.” They turned the tiles into an apartment block by adding photos of facades on them. This way, they made a tiny version of a Soviet-era concrete apartment block inside a toilet.

Gyva Grafika is a Lithuanian creative decor and design studio focused on decorating various interior and exterior objects. The project titled WC for Architects isn’t just a fun way to decorate an interior space with photo, but it comes with a background story and concept.

This particular toilet is located in Kaunas, in a restaurant called Galeria Urbana. The task of the team was to decorate and old bathroom while keeping the old tiles intact. As the team explains, Lithuania often neglects its public spaces, and this is where the inspiration came from:

“A lot of people live in the cleanest apartments but once they step outside the situation changes completely. Stairwells, yards, and other public spaces are usually abandoned and ignored.”

To decorate the tiles, they used photos of typical local facades taken in a nearby neighborhood. The team made stickers for the toilet tiles, but a bit later they also made real tiles using direct printing, as a little experiment of their own.

The team behind the project believes that people of different cultures and historical background will look at these tiles differently. But for them, these are just the usual facades that they grew up with. They explained to me that these facades are becoming extinct with the EU sponsored renovation projects. So, in a way, his is one of the ways to say goodbye and embrace the better tomorrow.

If you’d like to see more of Gyva Grafika’s projects, make sure to visit their website and the web store and follow them on Facebook and Behance. Here are a few more photos of the WC for Architects.