You'd be hard pressed to think of any other toilet which celebrates its 20th birthday with cake, speeches, a string trio and throngs of admirers.
However, you'd also struggle to name another loo which has had such an impact on its community — or become as iconic — as Kawakawa's Hundertwasser toilets.
![Kawakawa Primary School kids chuckle as they are called on to sing 'Happy Birthday' to a whare paku. Photo / Peter de Graaf](https://www.nzherald.co.nz/resizer/v2/YGZZ6ZONK33FPWAQEFPY44G75I.jpg?auth=4287ecdb289c0cd4e1fc92ad39c9fb32869d8b07af5140ff78ed9c827e317ca1&width=16&height=13&quality=70&smart=true)
When the Austrian-born artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, with the help of local schoolchildren and dozens of volunteers, transformed the town's run-down 1960s toilet block into a functional work of art, Kawakawa was a depressed backwater lined by empty shops.
These days it's a bustling service and tourist town with a revamped vintage railway, a cycle trail, an innovative community hub/visitors' centre nearing completion, and some of the fastest rising property prices in Northland.