Toi-Toi Toilets and the Berlin Soul
Celebrating a City Forever under construction
by nOT
Toi Toi Toilets and the Berlin Soul
A love letter to the unfinished
There are certain stories that could only come from one place. They don’t translate well. They don’t try to. They exist because of their setting, shaped by it, inseparable from it. For me, this is one of those stories — and somehow, it captures the character of Berlin more clearly than anything I could have deliberately planned.
A client once came to me with a strange and very specific request: she wanted a tattoo of a Toi Toi toilet.
If you’re not familiar, Toi Toi is a brand of portable plastic toilets — the kind you see lined up at music festivals, construction sites, demonstrations, pop-up events. They’re basic. Industrial. Always nearby, but rarely noticed. They belong to the visual noise of a city that’s constantly in motion. No one thinks of them as symbolic. And that’s exactly what made the request so compelling.
She wasn’t joking. Not at all. She was genuinely fascinated by them. She even ran an Instagram account where she posted photographs of every Toi Toi she came across — collecting them the way other people collect architecture, graffiti, or street art. When she asked me to tattoo one, something shifted. I started seeing them everywhere. Not just in the background, but woven directly into the rhythm of the city.
They’ve been around since the 1970s. Their design has evolved slowly, almost reluctantly, over the decades. I ended up sketching three versions: the original model, with its squared, almost outhouse-like form; a mid-era update; and the current, smoother version. She chose the first one. We tattooed it immediately.
Then something unexpected happened.
I posted the two unused designs on Instagram — without intention, really. Within a few days, two more people reached out. Each one wanted a different version of the Toi Toi. Within a single week, I had tattooed all three models on three different clients. What felt like a one-off idea quietly turned into a trilogy.
That made me pause.
What is it about this image — this plastic, utilitarian box — that speaks to people? Why would something so functional, so anonymous, resonate enough for someone to carry it on their skin?
I think the answer has everything to do with Berlin.
This city is permanently unfinished. Buildings rise, fall, and rise again. Streets are always being torn open and repaved. Neighborhoods shift identities every few years. Construction sites are as much a part of the landscape as monuments. Everything here feels mid-process — and strangely, that’s where the beauty lies. Berlin never pretends to be polished. It doesn’t wait until things are complete before living inside them. The rawness, the mess, the transition — that’s the point.
In that context, the Toi Toi becomes more than a plastic structure. It’s a marker of activity. It appears when something is happening — when something is being built, dismantled, occupied, or temporarily inhabited. It doesn’t try to be beautiful or iconic. It simply shows up. Quietly signaling that transformation is underway. It belongs to the in-between.
And maybe that’s what people connect with — especially here.
Berlin has always attracted those who live in the in-between: artists, migrants, outsiders, wanderers, people starting over or opting out. It’s long been a home for those who don’t need perfection — who are comfortable with chaos, or even thrive in it. Clubs in abandoned buildings. Galleries in garages. Raves in forests. A kind of creativity that grows precisely in the cracks.
People who tattoo something like a Toi Toi aren’t just making a joke — or at least not only a joke. They’re pointing to something that usually goes unnoticed and saying: this matters. This is part of it. This is also where life happens. They’re honoring the temporary, the makeshift, the practical — the structures that hold everything together quietly, while the bigger picture is still forming.
So yes, at first glance, it might seem absurd. A portable toilet as a tattoo.
But in the end, it becomes something else entirely. A marker of place. A symbol of transition. A quiet love letter to a city that’s always under construction — and proud of it.
Because sometimes, what lasts isn’t what’s permanent.
It’s what keeps showing up, no matter how unfinished things are.
text by nOT