Office for Public Bathrooms (OPB) is a group founded by three New York City-based design professionals, Julie Chou, Kevin Gurley and Boyeong Hong, with the mission to build and maintain more public bathrooms all around NYC.
The group started in 2018 as a project looking at homelessness in the public realm as part of the Forefront Fellowship with the Urban Design Forum. Early on, the lack of public bathrooms in the city was identified as a major issue in the city. From that project, the three of us continued to advocate for public bathrooms, looking at how best to design them, where they should be located, and advocating for legislation calling for new public bathrooms. Eventually, we formed the Office for Public Bathrooms.
In 2023, numerous bills and legislation in NYC were finally passed, calling for new public bathrooms across the city. Where can these public bathrooms go? The work continues!
The team
Julie Chou is a founding partner at Purpose by Design Architects and is committed to exploring how cities and the built world can better and more equitably serve everyone. Her experience spans a wide range of projects, from affordable, supportive, and transitional housing to community facilities, interiors, and exterior spaces that foster community and connection. She is an active member of Manhattan Community Board Five and holds a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and a BArch from Cooper Union.
Kevin Gurley is an urban planner and Manager of Planning at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), where he manages the planning of transit system expansion and enhancement projects, such as new subway lines and stations. He has experience in both the public and private sectors working on architecture and planning projects in cities in the US, Mexico, and China. He holds a Master in Urban Planning degree from Harvard University and a Master of Architecture from Florida International University in Miami.
Boyeong Hong is a Research Fellow in the Civic Analytics Program at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management. Her research interests focus on how to apply urban informatics to real world problems in urban planning and operations. Boyeong has been an affiliated adjunct faculty at Columbia University, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Boyeong earned a Ph.D. in Civil and Urban Engineering, majoring in Urban Informatics from New York University, and she holds a M.S. in Applied Urban Science and Informatics from NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). She holds a B.Arch from Yonsei University and a Master of City Planning degree from Seoul National University.
Supporters and partners
Office for Public Bathrooms 