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The Unique Roadside Rest Area; A compilation of the American Interstate System, Vernacular Architecture, and the Public Toilet

Mar 20, 2021 | final paper, Graduate, Research | 0 comments

Ashley Lowe

Thesis Question

How has the American interstate system, vernacular architecture, and the public toilet influenced Roadside Rest Areas’ architectural designs through the 20th and 21st centuries?

 

Introduction

You may be wondering how I came up with this topic to research. It’s a long story, but not as long as some of the drives that influenced this idea.  

My first cross country drive was when I moved to Oregon from North Carolina in the summer of 2018 to start my master’s degree in Interior Architecture here at the University of Oregon. Before this move, I had never been east of Tennessee and my longest day either driving or as a passenger in a car was probably just over 12 hours.

Since living in Oregon, I have driven across the country six times. I have come to love road trips and long-distance driving. A majority of these trips have been by myself – with the exception of one when my mom tagged along for the ride last summer on my way back to Oregon from North Carolina. I enjoy these drives because you get to see so many different landscapes and communities, all within a few hours or days. It’s truly amazing. I feel like I get a small glimpse of life in each city and state that I drive through.

Not until the latter part of my cross-country drives did I start to notice the unique architecture of each rest area I stopped at. Once I started noticing them, I couldn’t stop! My most recent cross-country drive was last November. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic I felt that it would be safer driving than flying home for the holidays. As I started my three-day drive home from Oregon to Alabama, I quickly became enthralled with every rest area I drove past. Making this drive in three days was extraordinarily ambitious and consisted of three 13+ hour days of driving. During this time, I took full advantage of every rest area I approached. These stops allowed me to safely take breaks whenever I felt fatigued, and their unique characteristics kept me interested in seeing what was further down the interstate.

With the specific requirement that this research paper is to focus on the toilet, my personal experience, and interest in the roadside public toilet, aka a rest area, as stated above, influenced my decision to focus my research on this topic. In this paper, I will be exploring how the American interstate system, vernacular architecture, and the public toilet have influenced the architectural design of roadside rest areas through the 20th and 21st centuries.

 

The Relationship between the Interstate and the Roadside Rest Area

First came the car, then the interstate, and simultaneously the rest area. The Interstate Defense Act of 1956, implemented by President Eisenhower, allowed for the construction of highway systems across the country with the intent to eliminate unsafe roads and traffic jams and ensure speedy and safe transcontinental travel. Many years later, the United States interstate system currently has 46,876 miles of paved roads interconnecting cities and states. Accompanying these interstates incrementally and at the border of each state are rest areas. Built with the same enthusiasm and vigor as the highway system thanks to the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, these roadside pit stops allowed drivers to safely take breaks from monotonous Interstate travel by providing drivers with basic amenities such as toilets, vending machines, picnic tables, and pet walking areas. (History.org)

 

Before interstates and rest areas, there were minor roadside stops for drivers. These roadside stops provided drivers with minimal amenities, most just including shade, water, and picnic shelters.

Rest areas were constructed as part of the interstate highway system and legislature required that rest areas be built on the same basis, quality, and importance of the highway system and match its modernity. Being a prominent part of the interstate system and being deemed a necessity by the Policy on Safety Rest Areas for the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, most states established roadside development programs that constructed and maintained roadside rest areas. These development programs are managed and operated by the Department of Transportation, and in-house landscape architects and architects design the landscaping, site circulation, and building structures. (Dowling) The overall design criteria for rest areas set standards for site selection, lighting, building design and layout, plumbing fixtures and accessories, and interior building specifications that prioritize the safety of the rest area users.

The goal of rest areas is to provide particular points for stopping along the interstate, so the number of automobiles parked along the road is reduced. Rest areas offer drivers locations to stop and be a safe and comfortable distance from traffic. The excerpt below from the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways gives an in-depth description of rest areas’ intended use.

 

“Rest areas are to be provided on Interstate highways as a safety measure. Safety rest areas are off-road spaces with provisions for emergency stopping and resting by motorists for short periods. They have freeway type entrances and exit connections, parking areas, benches and tables and may have toilets and water supply where proper maintenance and supervision are assured. They may be designed for short-time picnic use in addition to parking of vehicles for short periods. They are not to be planned as local parks.”

A Policy on Safety Rest Areas for the National

System of Interstate and Defense Highways, 1958

 

According to CalTrans, rest areas provide travelers with a chance to stop and stretch safely, take a nap, use the restroom, get water, check maps, place telephone calls, switch drivers, check vehicle loads, and exercise pets (Safety Roadside Rest Areas | Caltrans). Having the opportunity to stop at a rest area frequently allows for the reduction of drowsy and distracted drivers and eliminates the need for unsafe parking along the roadside. Rest areas are essential to highway safety.

As interstate travel becomes more popular, the need for rest areas becomes more prevalent. Many state standards suggest that rest areas are spaced 30 miles apart or 30 minutes driving time (Fowler et al.) With this standard, many states began designing and constructing rest areas to meet the demands of interstate travel and promote highway safety.

Rest Area Vernacular in the 20th Century

Not only do rest areas provide basic service amenities for travelers, but they also use architecture to create a context of place and showcase the identity of the region the rest area is located in. Many travelers who utilize rest areas are just passing through and are unfamiliar with the region. Rest areas use architecture to express the unique cultural and aesthetic qualities of the region. The rest areas’ design is often the responsibility of landscape architects who work for the department of transportation services. The intent of the rest area designer is to include an appropriate architectural theme, environmentally friendly site design, and a thoughtful selection of materials, colors, and plantings. Appropriate architectural themes are often based on the local culture, history, terrain, geology, or vegetation (Safety Roadside Rest Areas | Caltrans).

Rest areas are intentionally designed with unique and colorful expressions of the historical and regional locale to connect people with their passing regions. It is standard for rest areas to have a central theme implemented throughout the site. The toilet building is often the most prominent building on the site and is designed to serve as the rest area’s centerpiece expressing a specific theme. Picnic areas scattered around the toilet building are designed to support the theme of the rest area. Often, the material or design qualities of these structures are exaggerated to create unique and exciting structures. (Dowling)

Many travelers may overlook these rest areas’ unique regional architecture, and others may be fascinated by it. Either way, the vernacular of rest areas are created with specific intent. Starting with the establishment of rest areas in the late 1950s and until today, many of these buildings were designed in a range of different styles. These styles range from traditional, modern, regional, rustic, free form, and funk revival styles, using different materials and forms.

In research by the architecture historian, Joanna Dowling, provides a breadth of knowledge on each of the styles mentioned above and how they are implemented in rest area design. These styles are based on different decades, different construction materials, and various building and roof forms.

Each of these categories shows the qualities of a specific decade and has defining material and form features. Dowling identifies a first-generation toilet building that gives a great starting point to look at how rest area architecture has evolved throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries. This toilet building was built in Wisconsin in 1960 and is constructed of wood and stone. The structure is rectangular with a gable roof that also provides a covered walkway for the entrance and along the walkway. This first-generation toilet building is a relatively small structure, and from looking at the picture, I would say that there is an entrance on both sides of this building leading into either a single or double stalled restroom. I would agree with Dowling that this first-generation toilet building is of a basic traditional style given its scale and materiality.

 

First-generation toilet building built in Wisconsin in 1960. This rest area building is of the basic traditional style. Photo by Joanna Dowling.

 

Some of the most iconic rest areas are built in a regional style. These styles often use direct iconography and structures from the region the rest area is located. More and more people began to use rest areas because of interstate travel and the lure of cross-country family road trips. With this increase in use, states began to build more rest areas that would attract travelers. These rest areas began to take on regional architectural qualities. The most prolific being teepee picnic shelters located at rest areas in South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas (Dowling). Rest areas in Arizona and New Mexico also express traditional adobe building materials. Regional-style rest areas allow travelers to experience and learn about that specific region’s culture in a simple and impactful way. There are many examples of this regional style of rest area architecture and can be implemented within the design in various ways. Some Rest areas express regional characteristics literally with large structures. Others use regional stylistic qualities in a minimal way by just building a simple structure with local materials to blend into the local landscape. An example of a minimal regional-style rest area is the one below located in Joshua Tree National Park.

This rest area is located in Arizona and is constructed of traditional building materials and uses local colors and iconography. Photo from google maps.

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This rest area is located in Joshua Tree National Forest and is a minimal design constructed with local building materials with the intent to blend into the local landscape.

As time went on and American tourism began to gain traction, rest areas began extending the amenities they offered travelers. In the 1970s, rest areas started to increase in size, and the main toilet building added on enclosed lobbies that included information and emphasized the dispersal of tourist information (Dowling.) With the expansion of scale and programmatic elements, the main toilet building started to increase in scale and take on new forms. Being of the mid-century era, rest areas built during this time were being built with popular mid-century modern features like unconventional building forms that had unique relationships with the landscape

This rest area is located in Kentucky and expresses modern materials and design. Photo by Joanna Dowling.

 

Sixty years later, these rest areas and their various stylistic themes are still important. These styles are crucial because not only do they express a specific style of architecture, but they are also showcasing the prevalence of the interstate system and the roadside rest area and its historical context within American history. Historians and historical preservationists argue that many roadside rest areas are becoming, if not already, significant historical artifacts. These professionals are working to implement restorative work to repair and preserve many of these meaningful structures and add rest areas with significant architectural meaning to the national registrar of historic places. This is meaningful work, and I couldn’t agree more with this action to preserve these unique and historic structures. Rest areas are an essential facet of architecture because many of them provide great examples connecting people to place with purposeful cultural and aesthetic design qualities. These creative placemaking qualities add to the overall experience of traveling and allow travelers to enjoy their time, no matter how short it is at a rest area.

 

Current Rest Area Design

Although transportation means have advanced and the emphasis on family road trips has changed since the establishment of the interstates system, states are still investing in unique rest area design. Current modern and even award-winning rest areas still provide travelers with fundamental rest area amenities like parking, restrooms, travel information, picnic areas, etc. These new rest area additions are taking advantage of technology advancements in building construction and adding new amenities like playgrounds and educational exhibits that provide information on the region’s history or landscape.

With the advancements in technology and sustainable design, designers can bring the site context of the locale to a new level within rest area design. For example, the Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center located south of Cheyenne along 1-25 is constructed of rammed earth. This sustainable building material minimizes the need to use wood or stone and is located regionally, reducing carbon emissions. The beautiful rammed earth material allows visitors to see the regional landscape of Wyoming in a new way. The cross-sections of rammed earth show layers of sediment and rock, allowing visitors to see the different layers of time within the landscape. The rest area’s interior has large expanses of glass providing views to expanse vistas encouraging visitors to stop and relax for a moment. This particular rest area also has more than one mile of walking trails located on the site encouraging visitors to stop and stretch their legs (pls4e).

 

Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center Photo from google maps

 

Another noteworthy example of a recent rest area design is the Goose Creek Safety rest area located in Harris, Minnesota, along 1-35. This rest area was awarded the 2019 AIA Minnesota Honor Award. This rest area allows visitors to move quickly through the site with a clear path to the restroom facilities but encourages those moving through to slow down and rest and enjoy the views of Goose Creek and distant farm fields (“Goose Creek Safety Rest Area”). This rest area, like many others, has the goal of encouraging travelers to slow down, rest, and rejuvenate. This goal is achieved with benches overlooking a small playground, winding paths through a pollinator garden, upgraded picnic tables, and an inviting wood cladding. This adaptive reuse design reuses the original rest area structure and adds an additional circular element to house more restrooms and a lobby with travel information. The materials chosen for the building’s exterior symbolize specific qualities found in the regional landscape like the wooden slats of barns, circular forms of silos, and tall trees within the landscape (“Goose Creek Safety Rest Area”). I think the Goose Creek rest area is a beautiful example of modern rest area design. I believe the exterior and interior materials are incredibly thoughtful and play an important role in complementing the site’s regional context. With a unique form and interesting circulation path around the building, I would have no problem slowing down and enjoying my time at this rest area.

 

The entrance of the Goose Creek rest area. Photo by Pete Sieger.

 

In addition to these unique rest area structures, I wanted to include this design by the ColoradoBuildingWorkshop. Although this isn’t a traditional rest area in the sense of a roadside pit stop, I believe this trailside privy is still a great example of public toilet design. I admire the intentional implementation of the design to match the local vernacular. The Long Peak toilets were built in 2018 by the ColoradoBuildingWorkshop in collaboration with the National Parks Service and are located in Rocky Mountain National Park. Long’s Peak is the tallest and most iconic mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park and has become one of the most frequented 14ers in the state of Colorado (ROMO Backcountry Privies | 2018 | Colorado Building Workshop). In 1983 the National Parks Service first installed backcountry toilets to deal with human waste on the trail to the summit. Over time and exposure to harsh climate conditions, the original toilets have deteriorated and are no longer successfully managing backcountry waste. ColoradoBuildingWorkshop worked with the National Parks Service to re-design and construct new backcountry toilets. The final design comprises a series of prefabricated structural gabion walls that explore lightweight prefabricated construction. Within the gabions, a series of thin steel plate moment frames triangulate the lateral loads within the structure while stones collected from the area are used as ballast (ROMO Backcountry Privies | 2018 | Colorado Building Workshop). Students participating in ColoradoBuildingWorkship erected the structure in eight days. I find this structure to be stunning, and I think the students involved did a great job. I love how the form seemingly disappears into the surrounding landscape. 

 

The Long Peak Privies by ColoradoBuildingWorkshop

 

ADA Implications Within Rest Areas

With many rest areas built before the Americans with Disability Act was signed into law in 1990, states are investing millions of dollars and countless person-hours into rest area infrastructure to make these amenities accessible and comply with ADA codes. The requirement to meet these standards has caused many historic rest area structures to be retrofitted to comply with the updated laws. All new construction rest areas are being built with these standards implemented. 

 

Conclusion

Without the Interstate Defense Act of 1956 implemented by President Eisenhower constructing American interstates and for the Highway Beautification Act of 1965 setting the initial standard that rest areas should be built to the degree of interstate systems, we would not have the many historical and unique rest area structures that we have today. The development of the American interstate system and the goal to implement and provide travelers safety is what established the many rest areas we have today. Architecture as a tool for placemaking allowed designers to use the region’s vernacular architecture to inform travelers of the community’s cultural and aesthetic qualities that live in that area. How nice is it that you can learn so quickly about a community and its culture by simply stopping for a quick break at a rest area? From the first-generation toilet structure built in Wisconsin in 1960 to the award-winning Goose Creek Rest area in Minnesota, it is easy to see the evolution rest areas have made throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Current rest areas have evolved to meet sustainability goals, implement new site amenities, and provide a safe and accessible user experience for all interstate travelers while still expressing regional cultural aesthetics. 

 Looking towards the future, I wonder what rest area designs will look like 20 or 50 years from now. What preservation efforts will be put into place to save cherished rest area structures? Will we still need rest areas in the future? If we still need them, what new amenities will they have for travelers? Will they have charging stations for electric cars? How will rest areas support autonomous vehicles? Only time will tell. 

Bibliography

—. “Safety on the Interstate: The Architecture of Rest Areas.” Society for Commercial Archeology, 19 Mar. 2020, https://sca-roadside.org/safety-on-the-interstate-the-architecture-of-rest-areas/.

 Dowling, Joanna. Balancing Past and Present Safety Rest Areas and the American Travel Experience. https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/partners/nsrac2008/PDFs/A3_1-History.pdf.

 Fowler , David, et al. “Compilation and Evaluation of Rest Area Issues and Design.” Transportation Research Record , pp. 54–62.

 “Goose Creek Safety Rest Area.” AIA Minnesota, 21 Feb. 2020, https://www.aia-mn.org/goose-creek-safety-rest-area/.

 History.org, Rest Area. “Rest Area History.” Rest Area History.Org, https://restareahistory.org/history. Accessed 21 Jan. 2021.

 Longs Peak Toilets – AIA. https://www.aia.org/showcases/6120798-longs-peak-toilets. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

 pls4e. “Southeast Wyoming Welcome Center.” SAH ARCHIPEDIA, 1 Aug. 2018, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WY-01-021-0095.

 Safety Roadside Rest Areas | Caltrans. https://dot.ca.gov/programs/design/lap-landscape-architecture-and-community-livability/lap-liv-h-safety-roadside-rest-areas. Accessed 20 Mar. 2021.

Public toilets through the lens of Menstrual Equity

Mar 17, 2021 | final paper, Graduate, Research | 0 comments

 Figure 1. Definition of Equity vs. Equality

By Jenna Wheeler

What is meant by “menstrual equity”?  In order to define this phrase, we must first back up and decode the word “equity”.  We all know what menstrual means, as in referring to menstruation, but what of equity and how does it play into gender division of public toilets?  Why is it important to consider?  How is it the basis of gender equality?  In this paper, I will attempt to explain why menstruation is at the core of gender equity and how public bathrooms provide the perfect platform for social justice and social reform through that lens.

Although this is a global issue, given at any one time, fully one-quarter of the global population of adult women are menstruating (Schmitt et al. 3), this paper’s perspective will be derived primarily from the US context with some examples from the UK, since that is where the flushing toilet as we know it made its inaugural debut.  Both the US and the UK represent the Western world, the industrialized world, the countries that were the forerunners of and thereby the most impacted by the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and beyond.  Impacts that influenced gender inequity in public toilets, for that is where this story begins.

Victorian Influences

At the beginning of the 19th century when the Industrial Revolution in America was beginning to take hold of the urban landscape, its consequential impact of immense economic change resulted in a separation of worlds for men and women, coined a “division of spheres” (Kogan, “Sex Separation:  The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety”  146). Prior to this division, “both men and women worked at home, a space devoted not only to rearing the family but also to retail business and professional practice (155).”  Once manufacturing moved to the urban core, the home was no longer the primary workplace, and a disruption in the fabric of homelife began where the “division of spheres” translated to a distinction between public realm and private realm (146).  What resulted was what modern women are all too familiar with in their fight for equal rights:  the public realm became that of men and the private realm became that of women.  Along with this newly minted allocation for women came a redefined role, that of being stable and moral, maintaining religious sensibilities.  While men tackled the unstable, changing world of technology and industrialism, the public realm, women were tasked with staying home to uphold the stability and morality of the home, the private realm. 

This ideology of the home being a distinct sphere for women became known as the “cult of true womanhood” (Kogan, “Sex Separation:  The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 147).  Maintaining this sphere helped ease the social anxieties of the time due to unprecedented changes in the economy and culture.  When women ventured beyond their domicile, whether for work, shopping, or entertainment, a ripple of concern domino-ed through many of the general populace, because seeing women in the public realm indicated a “living contradiction of the cult of true womanhood (147).”  Given this, it is no wonder there was resistance to providing adequate, public toilet provision for women, as both men and women embraced this Victorian mandate.  

In concert with this theme of “the cult of true womanhood” came Victorian sensibilities around privacy and modesty.  As the middle class emerged due to the prevalence of manufactured goods that the industrial revolution promoted, the distinction between classes became more pronounced and attitudes around cleanliness and morality coincided.  Soon the lower class, the poor, and immigrants were considered to be dirty and with a low sense of morality (Rehman 190), while the middle and upper classes were considered clean and the arbiters of purity and religious morality, especially in the domain of women. 

With cities becoming populated resulting from the workplace moving from home to city, hygiene practices came into question as smells and sounds associated with the body became pronounced with the abundance of people.  Attitudes around cleanliness began shifting with both the emergence of the city and of the middle class.  What was once considered normal toilet and hygiene behavior before the height of the industrial revolution, for example men, women, and children urinating in the street gutters (Greed, “The Historical Development of Public Toilets” 48) and bathing but once a month, gradually became seen as dirty and immoral.  “Hygiene practices and class [became] inextricably linked (Gelman Taylor 47).”  A disembodiment around human biology and its elimination processes, from urinating to defecating, passing gas to menstruating, became part of the social structure and hierarchy (Plaskow 59).  Concurrent with this disassociation came the stigma of shame and disgust.  And “the higher people [were] on the social ladder, the more they [were] expected to act as if they [were] disembodied” (59).

Gendered Public Toilets

With industrialization came the expansion and population growth of cities which created demand for better sanitation (Greed, “The Historical Development of Public Toilets” 34).  With men dominating the public realm, gendered public toilets were introduced as early as the 1820’s in Scotland (Gershenson and Penner 5) and more commonly in the mid-19th century in both the US and UK, where “gendered” refers to men only.  In all three countries, public toilets for women were generally not built until much later (upwards of 40 or more years) and, in some instances, with significant effort and activism around the turn of the 20th century (5). 

According to scholar Clara Greed, public toilets for women were intentionally nonexistent in the 19th and early 20th centuries as a means of controlling their movement, quite literally to keep them at home so that the desired separation could be maintained between the women’s domain and men’s (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 121).  Women had their domestic sphere, and they were to conform with the notions surrounding that sphere.  Creating a public toilet for women in the “city of man” (121) would not only threaten that core vision, it would also cast nefarious shadows on any woman daring to be out in public, disrupting the “cult of true womanhood” and distorting her image to that of a “public woman”, an undesirable (Gershenson and Penner 6).  Adding in the complication and cultural stigma around elimination processes, specifically as it relates to women’s biology and menstruation, this notion of separate domains was reinforced.  With little or no provisions in the City, women were more often forced to stay home.

Advances Made in Public Toilets for Women

Despite industrialized cities and Victorian values catering to men, there was still a lot of movement that women conducted outside of their domestic sphere.  Whether it be for shopping or a trip to the theatre or joining the workforce, it became clear that women needed to be accommodated in the public realm as much, if not more so, than men, although it would take another century for bathroom equity legislation to make the headlines.

In London, England, the effort to gain public toilets for women was spearheaded by the Ladies’ Sanitary Association.  Starting in the 1850’s, shortly after the infamous display of George Jenner’s flushing toilet at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the LSA campaigned for public toilets for women in both the public realm at high-traffic intersections and in the workplace.  They made minor headway over the decades, but it wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that their diligence really paid off, as one site in particular was targeted for a women’s public bathroom at the corners of Park and Camden High Streets in the vestry of St. Pancras (Penner 35).

Initially approved with a wooden model constructed at the site, a local group of concerned citizens (comprised primarily of men) petitioned the local government to end the construction.  Reasons cited were that such a facility would lower property values, that there was no need for this facility, because local women shoppers lived in the area and could relieve themselves at their homes (a false claim made up by the male constituent), and that it was an “abomination” that no one would want to live near.  The group’s efforts paid off, initially, and the construction ceased, despite the persistence of the sole woman council member as well as one of the male members, George Bernard Shaw, the famous Irish playwright who was quite politically active.  Five years later, as a result of a report conducted by the Highways, Sewers, and Public Works committee combined with a formal inquiry on behalf of a Mrs. Miall Smith, the project was revived and a women’s public bathroom was built (Penner 40).

Meanwhile, across the seas in America, many state jurisdictions were amending their constitutions with sanitation acts to accommodate women in the workplace based on the precedent of the first law passed in 1887 that required sex-segregated toilets that took place in Massachusetts over a decade prior to the Camden High Street toilets.  The law’s namesake, “An Act to Secure Proper Sanitary Provisions in Factories and Workshops”, required that “suitable and proper wash-rooms and water-closets shall be provided for females where employed, and the water-closets used by females shall be separate and apart from those used by males” (Kogan, “Sex Separation:  The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 145).    Here again, as much as Victorian values would prefer to turn a blind eye to a woman stepping outside her domestic sphere, the reality was that more and more women were entering the workforce, and either there were no sanitary provisions made for these women or they were forced to share toilet facilities with men.

As Victorian rules around modesty and decorum were deeply entrenched in the culture, and there was a concurrent belief that women were the weaker sex and needed protecting, that their modesty and purity needed protecting, and so as to not disrupt the “division of spheres” between men and women, this landmark legislation was interestingly initiated by male policymakers.  So committed were they to this ideology of separate spheres that prior to the passage of this law, planners had enacted regulations mandating separate spaces for women in public buildings that ranged from department stores to hotels, restaurants to post offices, banks to libraries, and even railroad cars (Kogan, “Sex Separation:  The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety” 151).  These places were dedicated to women and were furnished and adorned as if in a woman’s domicile.  Reading rooms in public libraries were afforded a separate, discreet access to a bathroom that was otherwise not visible to others using the reading room (148).  Citing scholar Abigail Van Slyck’s explanation that gives cogent insight into the policymakers’ motivations:

“Ladies’ reading rooms established in American public libraries in the late 19th century did not welcome women as full participants in the public sphere.  Rather they played an active role in reproducing a particular set of gender assumptions (151).”

By seemingly appeasing the ‘weaker sex’ in providing their own special rooms, rooms that were distinctly separate from the rest of the public building to which they were a part of, women were at once both revered as warranting such special space, to keep up appearances of inclusivity, and simultaneously kept hidden and dismissed, so as to maintain the status quo of men remaining hierarchically dominant.  It stands to reason that with such abjection, an underlying shame would accompany one’s experience of said “special space.”  As Pakistani author Bushra Rehman astutely notes, “The dominant culture knows that if you can make people feel shame, you can make them do anything (Rehman 191).”  In the case of providing special spaces masked in a homey décor, the intended result was of keeping women in their place, in the separate sphere, in order for men, primarily, to make sense of the constantly changing, chaotic world foisted upon them and retain dominance.

With growth and expansion being a unilateral universal driver in the history of humanity, the public realm in America eventually saw the establishment of a sex-segregated bathroom mandate for new buildings in the adoption and publishing of the US’s first Uniform Building Code.  In 1927, the nation’s first UBC required that bathrooms be gender-segregated in “Group H buildings (hotels, apartments house, dormitories, lodging houses, convents, monasteries and old people’s homes (Kogan, “Code: History”).” Chapter 13, section 1305 stated the following code language: “Every building shall be provided with at least one toilet.  Every building and each subdivision thereof where both sexes are accommodated shall be provided with at least two toilets located in such building and one toilet shall be conspicuously marked “For Women” and the other conspicuously marked “For Men” (Kogan, “Code: History”).”

This marked an official beginning to what appeared to level the playing field and bring what appeared to be public toilet equality between the sexes, but old patterns and beliefs die hard:  it would be another 80 years or so before public toilet equity would enter the sanctioned conversation.  Add another decade to that and the conversation would begin to include “menstrual equity” (Crawford et al.).

 

Design Standards of Early Public Toilets

Scholar Barbara Penner makes this succinct inquiry in one of her articles: “From long queuing times to cramped cubicles, why has design for women public toilets been so rarely considered in the last century (Gershenson and Penner 24)?”  With its roots steeped in accommodating men before women were an equal counterpart to the workforce, the layout of a public toilet stall was never designed with the unique biological needs of women in mind.  (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 124)  One reason for this egregious oversight, that continues to this day, is due to the prominent male dominance prevalent in the water and sanitation engineering fields, the very people who steer the conversation around toilet design (Schmitt et al. 2).  Put another way, “toilet design remains deeply, if not invisibly, shaped by masculinist conventions (Gershenson and Penner 24).” Conventions so pervasive that even women who are in these professions, and who are menstruating, may turn a blind eye to women’s unique toilet needs (Schmitt et al. 2).  Why?  What is this about? 

On the one hand, there were the Victorian cultural protocols that accompanied the introduction of female public toilets, but on the other hand, as time wore on, and women became more liberated and engaged as an integral part of the voting public and workforce, public toilet policy and design continued to perpetuate the outdated precepts of the past.  Design of underground public toilets found in UK cities was based on the “perceived needs of a healthy young males (with narrow hips)” (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 125).  Early toilet design was not any different in the US, where “women daily confront[ed] spaces based on the needs of healthy male bodies” (Plaskow 54).  From the onset, men’s public toilets were designed with twice the number of fixtures (toilets and urinals) than women’s (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 118).  The underlying theme of controlling women’s movements was still at play despite advances in legislation and code regulations.  But it goes deeper than this, to the cultural stigma and embarrassment surrounding the “human embodiment of elimination” (Plaskow) specifically targeted at women’s biology with menstruation being a particularly hidden player.

Cultural Stigma around Women’s Biology

Scholar Judith Plaskow explores the historical context of shame and disgust around all modes of elimination noting that “excretion seems to be consigned to the shadows” (52), menstruation being one of the key bodily functions that people in general shy away from discussing.  Furthermore, she proposes that “the subject of elimination is deeply gendered… [where] women are indelibly linked” (59) to bathroom behavior:  from menstruation to pregnancy to nursing to mothering to care-taking the elderly or disabled, there is an integral, defining relationship between women and the bathroom.  And many of the activities women engage in in the bathroom are marked by different aspects of elimination, whether it be urinating, defecating, bleeding, nursing, or aiding a child or elder with their bathroom needs.  With the disassociation of bodily functions that developed in Victorian society, is it any wonder there is such a negative stigma surrounding menstruation, let alone the rest of a woman’s biology?  

Men attempted controlling the movement of women by restricting access to the public realm, to public toilets, adopting a similar attitude as the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that the Clinton administration imposed on gay and lesbian members of the military in the 1980’s.  As if keeping things hidden will enhance one’s experience of life, pretending something so primary doesn’t exist?  How is this fair and respectful?  Furthermore, how does this perpetuate a healthy populace that doesn’t resort to subversive behaviors? 

Judith Plaskow intelligently points out that “access to toilets is a prerequisite for full public participation and citizenship” and that “the absence of women’s toilets clearly reflects the exclusion of women from public power and public space” (52).  Renowned scholar Clara Greed further argues that “lack of toilet provision hampers women’s mobility and their chances of traveling and working, especially if there are no facilities for menstruating women” (Greed, “Taking Women’s Bodily Functions into Account in Urban Planning and Policy” 4).   A point well worthy of consideration, as biologically-born women make up more than half the global population, and of that portion, girls, women, and transgender boys and men are menstruating for easily 30 – 40 years of their lives.  That’s a lot of negating going on by the “dominant” class of men that comprise the policymakers, planners, politicians, sanitation engineers, and plumbing designers.  Then the question becomes why do women not stand up and fight for their rights and make a stink about this flagrant inequity?   In part, it comes down to laying down the stigma around women’s natural bodily functions, and this comes through education, activism, and a concerted effort on all parties of the human race to embrace the truth with dignity and reveal what has been “consigned to the shadows.”

Creating a More Inclusive Public Toilet

It is well documented that women take longer in the public bathroom than men for both biological and cultural reasons.  Biologically, women take twice as long to urinate because of the obvious barrier of clothing that must be removed followed by affixing the toilet seat cover, sitting, wiping, and then reversing those steps to get back out of the toilet stall.  Menstruation adds additional time with managing the changing of a pad or tampon, disposing of it, and taking needed measures for adequate cleaning.  Not to mention more frequent visits to the loo that is typical for the first few days of one’s flow.  Add in pregnancy which often creates more frequent visits to the bathroom, nursing a baby if the mother is uneasy with or restricted from doing so in a more public manner, and urinary tract infections that affect women at twice the rate of men, causing more frequent toilet usage.  Fully “30% of women between the ages of 15 and 64 may suffer some form of urinary incontinence as opposed to between 1.5% and 5% of men (Plaskow 54).”  And those are only the biological reasons.  Culturally speaking, women tend to be tasked with tending to babies’ and children’s toileting needs which may include navigating a stroller or other equipment, with assisting the elderly and disabled (who may have the added burden of needing assistance with their toileting needs), and managing shopping bags from the day’s errands (54), (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 119).

Scholar Clara Greed has assembled a consummate list of requirements needed to accommodate women and menstruators in the public toilet with all of their biological and cultural needs met.

  1. Starting with the door, there should be a minimum of 250 mm (9.8 in.) between the front edge of the toilet and edge of the in-swung door.
  2. The gap between the floor and the bottom of the door and toilet partitions should be changed from the standard male toilet stall design to be low to the floor or nonexistent. “Women need privacy, not surveillance (Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 135).”
  3. There should be adequate space to sit down without touching the walls and without unnecessary protrusions like a tacked-on plastic bin for menstrual product disposal. Instead, the disposal bin can be integrated into the back wall of the stall, and there would be a 450 mm (17.7 in.) diameter around the toilet free of any protruding objects, e.g. toilet paper dispensers, toilet seat cover dispensers, shelves, etc.
  4. Offering a bidet or squat type of toilet with access to water for cleansing would benefit menstruators as well as those accustomed to squatting and using water instead of toilet paper to clean themselves.
  5. Toilet paper should be soft, not scratchy, and should be easily attainable off a roll and not miserly dispersed through tiny square pieces or hard to obtain because the roller is intentionally sticky.
  6. Ideally, the toilet stall would have all the necessary facilities for cleaning up within the cubicle itself, e.g. hygienic soap, hot water, paper towels, and an adequate supply of menstrual products. Having these supplies would greatly help those who are menstruating as well as those with children or those suffering from diarrhea.
  7. Automatic cubicle door opening and closing, flushing water, and touchless faucets all would aid women with any of the biological or cultural needs listed.
  8. If the toilet facility opens directly onto a public way, then add a peek hole from inside so the user can look out before leaving in order to feel safe. Ideally, there would be a transition space between the stall and outside of it.

(Greed, “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom” 133–38)

  1. Lastly, as an adjunct from another female toilet activist group, include hooks or shelves that can keep personal belongings off the floor, and add a full-length mirror so one can check for any bleeding through from one’s menstrual cycle (Schmitt et al. 5).

All of these requirements combined may seem overwhelming at first, but if there is to be equity in women’s public toilets, not just equality, that will require taking into account all of these factors that conjoin women in daily life that follows them wherever they go, especially in the public realm.

Public Toilets for Women as a Platform for Social Justice

As articulated by scholars Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner:

“Changes to the existing toilet arrangements are explosive because they recognize, accommodate, and hence, legitimate the presence of a social group who customarily ‘make do’ and remain invisible at the level of representation (Gershenson and Penner 9).

Gendered public toilets for women and menstruators, then, have become a legitimate platform for social justice and social reform, because of their apparent invisibility at “the level of representation”, i.e. through policies and laws.  Here, change is both needed in the design approach to ensure the safety and dignity of individuals on their period and in the cultural subconscious whereby the images associated with this unique biology are no longer shunned and expected to remain hidden, but to be acknowledged as a fundamental human right. 

As one can surmise from the aforementioned list of proposed accommodations for women and menstruators in public toilets, the amount of space required far exceeds the space required for men’s public toilets.  The undisputable fact that men and women have “different biological characteristics… [implies] different types and degrees of spatial need (Molotch 5).”  In 1927 with the issuance of the first UBC that mandated both women and men be allocated separate toilets, the nuance of how to create the space was unconsciously (or perhaps subconsciously) omitted, simply because there wasn’t adequate data of women’s needs given the cultural overtones of modesty and separate spheres ideology that continued to endure long past the Victorian era ended.  As sociologist Harvey Molotch points out, “to provide equality for individual men and individual women, unequal resources must be distributed by the two groups (6).”  He further argues that the provision of public toilets, or lack thereof, can be seen as a form of  “sex discrimination” where women’s toileting “needs and uses, distributing space equally between men’s and ladies’ rooms actually produces ‘an unequal result’ (Gershenson and Penner 12).”  From an affirmative action perspective, Molotch continues that unless there is a demand for societal change, “only an ‘asymmetric distribution of space’ will improve the situation and provide ‘equality of opportunity’ among the genders (12).”

Potty Parity Laws

“Toilets are best seen as spaces of representation (Gershenson and Penner 10).” 

As previously discussed, the first national, official mandate on gender segregated toilets in America was with the inaugural issuance of the UBC in 1927.  Incorporation of the code regulations for separate gendered toilets was slow to take hold, and the code only applied to new buildings, which meant older buildings that pre-dated the decree were not required to update their bathrooms to conform with it. 

As women continued to enter the workforce and began to be represented in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, the disparity between women’s public toilets and men’s continued, where “toilet design and distribution both reflect[ed] and enforce[ed] gender norms (Plaskow 56).”  In 1962, however, a group of female legislators from the US House of Representatives petitioned for and were granted a powder room and lounge for their exclusive use located on the first floor of the Capitol.  The lounge included the only women’s toilet in the building.  There were 20 congresswomen at the time with 2 senators and 18 House members. 

Though it was a small victory for the women representatives, it still carried with it the message that women were to be kept out of the way and hidden.  Accessing the lounge from the House Chamber required going down a hall that was open to tourists or going through the minority leader’s quarters which then emptied into a long, winding corridor.  By contrast, the men’s bathroom was conveniently located a mere few feet away from the House Chamber (Plaskow 53).  This same lounge and toilet would serve women legislators for another 49 years when in 2011, they were finally granted an exclusive women’s restroom off the House floor, as conveniently located as the men’s restroom.  In 2011, there were a total of 90 congresswomen with 17 senators and 73 House members.

US women senators shares a similar story where they, too, did not have the privilege of having a dedicated women’s bathroom adjacent to the US senate floor until 1992.  Instead, they were forced to use the same facilities as tourists on a lower floor.  This resulted in two meaningful consequences: 1)  the possibility of missing a vote in the event of absence due to one’s biological need, and 2) the conveyance of the insidious message that women don’t belong in the Senate, that men are the “rightful occupant” (Gershenson and Penner 9).

Meanwhile, New York State made headlines with their first attempt at equitable gendered bathrooms with their landmark “Potty Parity” legislation in 1989.  The statute attempted creating restroom equality for men and women in new public buildings and mandated that there be an equal number of “sanitary fixtures” for both sexes.  The previous law had made a distinction between urinals and toilets, so men and women had access to the same number of toilets but had unequal access to “sanitary fixtures”.  A mere 16 years later in 2005, the New York City Council unanimously approved “The Women’s Restroom Equity Bill” where a ratio of 2:1 of women’s bathrooms to men’s bathrooms in most new buildings was required.  Previously, the requirement was a 1:1 ratio.

Slowly but surely, our modern culture is demanding societal change, and not surprisingly, the public toilet is at the intersection of that change.

 

“The Ground on Which We All Stand”

(Crawford et al.)

Where would we be without menstruation?  We would not exist as a species without menstruation.  It is that fundamental and primordial to the human species, quite literally “the ground on which we all stand (ibid).”  And yet, in our modern day and age and for millennia, there was and continues to be stigma, shame, and even disgust expressed around menstruation.  The Victorian ideology of “separate spheres” and disassociation from one’s human bodily functions plays a big part in this modern-day repression.  But there are other factors at play, religious and cultural, around the world.  There are passages in the bible that imply that menstruation is dirty and sinful; in Jewish culture, there are strict rules around when and when not to be in contact with a woman menstruating; in Buddhism, the belief is women lose their life force during menstruation; in Islam, a menstruating woman can’t touch the holy Quran, enter a mosque, or participate in ritual prayer; and the list goes on (Weiss-Wolf).  As author and activist Jennifer Weiss-Wolf keenly surmises, “It may be appropriate to say periods have been stigmatized for as long as patriarchy has been around (ibid).”

Periods are at the intersection of so many under-represented groups of people, in gender, age, race, and class, across the globe.  Periods touch the lives of nearly half the global population if statistics are true that 49.6% of the world populace are born into this word as biologically female.  That is a large number to be so quickly dismissed and unaccounted for in the world of policymakers.  Jennifer Weiss-Wolf wisely admonishes “we’ll never have gender equality [and gender equity] if we don’t talk about periods (ibid).”

Access to safe and adequate public toilets for women and all menstruators is the place where gender equality and gender equity can shine.  Returning to the first question posed in this paper, what is meant by “menstrual equity”?  Here is the answer:

“Menstrual Equity refers to the idea that society needs to recognize openly (and without shame or stigma) and take into account the fact that about half the population menstruates for a large portion of their lives (Crawford et al. 343).”

Going back to the equality vs. equity conversation, there are distinct differences between the two concepts.  “Equality demands the same treatment for all people, regardless of their differences.  Equity seeks fair treatment for all people, in light of their differences (Crawford et al. 343–44).” Throughout the US and UK histories, there have been inadequate toilet provision for many marginalized groups, from minority groups to women, from factory workers to the disabled and elderly, from transgender to the homeless.  Lack of public toilets for these groups carry a strong message that they are “outsiders to the body politic and that there is no room for them in public space (Plaskow 61).”  These groups could band together under the banner of Menstrual Equity and create a strong coalition to raise awareness and ultimately to change the culture around public toilets to be one of inclusivity where all members of society are embraced and encouraged to fully participate in public life and no longer be invisible.  And policymakers would embark on creating equitable access to public toilets for women and menstruators alike.

 

Bibliography

Crawford, Bridget J., et al. “The Ground on Which We All Stand:  A Conversation About Menstrual Equity Law and Activism.” Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, vol. 26, no. 2, 2020, pp. 340–88.

Gelman Taylor, Jean. “Bathing and Hygiene Histories from the KITLV Images Archive.” Cleanliness and Culture, Brill, pp. 41–60.

Gershenson, Olga, and Barbara Penner. “Introduction:  The Private Life of Public Conveniences.” Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, Temple University Press, 2009, pp. 1–32.

Greed, Clara. “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom.” Toilet:  Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, New York University Press, 2010, pp. 117–44.

Greed, Clara. “Taking Women’s Bodily Functions into Account in Urban Planning and Policy: Public Toilets and Menstruation.” Town Planning Review, vol. 87, no. 5, Sept. 2016, pp. 505–24. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.3828/tpr.2016.35.

Greed, Clara. “The Historical Development of Public Toilets.” Inclusive Urban Design:  Public Toilets, Architectural Press, 2003, pp. 31–50.

Kogan, Terry. “Code: History.” Sex-Separated Public Restrooms and Their Regulation throughout American History, https://www.stalled.online/standards.

Kogan, Terry. “Sex Separation:  The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety.” Toilet:  Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, New York University Press, 2010, pp. 145–66.

Molotch, Harvey. “Introduction:  Learning from the Loo.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, New York University Press, 2010, pp. 1–21. Open WorldCat, https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780814759646.

Penner, Barbara. “A World of Unmentionable Suffering:  Women’s Public Conveniences in Victorian London.” Journal of Design History, vol. 14, no. 1, 2001, pp. 35–51, http://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/14.1.35.

Plaskow, Judith. “Embodiment, Elimination, and the Role of Toilets in Struggles for Social Justice.” CrossCurrents, vol. 58, no. 1, Mar. 2008, pp. 51–64. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.1111/j.1939-3881.2008.00004.x.

Rehman, Bushra. “‘Our Little Secrets’: A Pakistani Artist Explores the Shame and Pride of Her Community’s Bathroom Practices.” Ladies and Gents:  Public Toilets and Gender, Temple University Press, 2009, pp. 208–17.

Schmitt, Margaret, et al. “Making the Case for a Female-Friendly Toilet.” Water, vol. 10, no. 9, Sept. 2018, p. 1193. DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.3390/w10091193.

Weiss-Wolf, Jennifer. Period Gone Public:  Taking a Stand for Menstrual Equity. Arcade Publishing, 2017.

 

Image Source

Figure 1. http://www.metrocouncil.org/About-Us/why-we-matter/Equity.aspx

 

Public Toilet Designs Effects for Women and Marginalized People

Mar 17, 2021 | final paper, Graduate, History, public restroom, Research | 0 comments

Introduction

Public toilets are often a last-minute emergency trip people do not want to take. It is a common space in the built environment, often located inside commercial buildings or on their own at a rest stop. The design, quantity, and location of public toilets is crucial to creating a pleasant experience for the people that use them. The smallest room is often overlooked in the mind of the designer, architect, or city planner. Lacking adequate dimensions, routes to and from, and the frequency of public toilets is an issue that needs to be considered.

The public toilet is a symbol of separation and inequality through multiple lenses. The prominent issues of gender or sex segregation is at the forefront of discussions due to transgender rights. While discussing one inequality, the intersection of other disadvantages is important to include. The public toilet is a space that should be equitable for all; however, gender, class, ability, houselessness, and race are all critical factors relating to the discrimination in public toilets. The history of the public toilet reveals the contexts surrounding society at various developments in the bathroom design and how these social implications arose with it. Architecture, design, and planning are important contributors to these implications and the lack of change in the public toilet structure.

Public Toilet History

In 1819 New York common council prohibited the dumping of waste into sewage systems due to the belief they would only be used as storm drains for run-off water. People were frequently seen in cloaks to obtain privacy when needed in relieve oneself in public. The city was seen as dirty and various diseases were running ramped. In the 1850s the sewers were thought to be the cause of the cholera outbreaks (Mokdad, Allaa).  

 

In the early 1800s, Paris was accustomed to the use of chamber pots and waste carts. The city was becoming overcrowded quickly and barrels of easement were placed on street corners to alleviate the great amount of waste on the streets. In 1830 public urinals were seen as sculptural objects and public urination was banned. Groups of women would gather in circles to allow one at a time to relieve themselves in the center with privacy or what they would call picking a flower. Cholera outbreaks began in 1849 leading to legislation to improve public health and the idea to take a top-down approach to sewage by 1853. The rest of Europe was now endowed with their versions of public toilets called public waiting rooms totally about 95 across various cities (Mokdad, Allaa).

In an effort to keep up with other European countries, London issued the Health Act of 1854 and continued to build upon the sewer system they began implementing in 1815. Prior to this, trying to outdo their rival city of Paris, the Society of Arts pressured the sewer companies heavily and eventually the Great Exhibition was hosted in England. The Crystal Palace facilities engineer was placed in charge of integrating water closets into the building. The 1851

The Great Exhibition wanted to provide the comfort of public toilets to their already accustomed visitors. Paris already had cabinets and urinals. London needed the success of these water closets to further push for the sewer systems. In the eyes of those who visited these public toilets, it was a great success. It was not enough however to keep them around and more years passed before public toilets were prominent in London (Penner, Barbara pg 45-48).

The year of the great exhibition was the year john snow discovered the water fountain with leaky sewage connected was causing the cholera epidemic. By 1858 comprehensive sewage plants protected water supply and provided modern infrastructure. The Water Act of 1862 presumably stopped the design of toilets. The water based flushing system became standard and was improved by 1895. In New York, vertical plumbing was implemented in 1880. Plumbing was now for everyone, not just the elites; however, woman suffragettes were fighting for their rights to accessing public toilets throughout this time (Mokdad, Allaa).

In 1928, there were 233 public toilets available to men and 184 available to women in London. The Public Health Act of 1936 allowed fees to be charged for the use of public toilets with the exception to urinals placing women at the disadvantage. A Paris company in 1964 produced automatic public toilets to 300 countries. Known as Sunny Sets by 1981 these toilets implemented barrier free usage, recycled water, and were protected from drug use and prostitution. At the same time in the New York, the AIDS epidemic placed public toilets in association with drug use, security issues, sexual activity, hygiene issues, and other illegal usage.  Of the 700 available public toilets in 1991, only 350 were accessible to those with disabilities and only 125 could accommodate those with infants. By 2004, only 419 remained and by 2010 129 remain standing with only 60 actually available. Yet the NYPD issues over 17,000 public urination citations each year (Mokdad, Allaa).

Description

The modern public toilet was born at the Great Exhibition in London providing a space that allowed almost all everyday people to use modern technology. At the same time, these spaces called public toilets, restrooms, bathrooms, etc, also became some of the first gendered spaces.  From the start of their story, sex separation was connected to public health concerns and the idea of creating well-ordered families. Public toilets were unequal for the poor, the disabled and women. The spaces created separation in society in other aspects, such as race and religion. This paper explores the public toilet in relation to women’s equality issues, including homelessness and accessibility issues.

Implications for Women

The first notable disparity between men and women in regard to the public toilet was the payment of a penny to use the facilities. Regulations stated that a payment was required to use a public toilet but there was no payment for the use of public urinals. Men often were able to do their business for free, while women had to pay for the new technology (Mokdad, Allaa). As the public toilet became further developed, the differentiation of public toilet design for men and women continued to create disparities. The idea of women out in public was new at this time, and the creation of public toilets was minimal because there was not a strong desire to actively help women spend more time in public.

            The mid-nineteenth century was in the business of continuing to keep women at home and in private. Ideas of privacy surrounding the bathroom were continuing to grow. The social anxiety surrounding the time was highlighted by the idea of women going to work in factories a as well as their participation in social activism. The need for sex separated toilets was conflated with this anxiety and keeping the privacy between men and women at work. The idea of privacy was elevated to modern ideas of modesty and bodily functions and social morality.  The effort to protect the virtue of modesty, hiding women away from their male counterparts in all public realms was important to this time. (Kogan, Terry pg 148).

This realist approach of the nineteenth century and anxiety over the emergence of women lead to the design of women exclusive spaces in public buildings along with the idea that women were fragile and in need of a retreat. The laws that separate sex in public toilets have created great complications for all transsexual and transgendered people, people with disabilities, parents with opposite-gendered children, intersex persons and women. The separation encourages the social understanding that these groups of people need public protection from their inherent vulnerability, while men are inherently predatory (Kogan, Terry pg 164).

Although sex separated bathrooms were determined to fit the needs of keeping men and women distanced, it did not make any change to the design of the public toilet. Most public toilets are labeled men and women, but what really is the difference? In a one-person public toilet, the women’s room often has a changing table while the men’s room may have a urinal in addition to the sit down toilet. In a shared public toilet, these differences remain, but the stall shapes and sizes are largely the same. Public toilet design was done by male architects and engineers because they’re were not any female coworkers at the time toilets were becoming a part of society. Women did not have a say and did not get much consideration when the design of public toilet stalls were integrated into bathrooms (Ramster and Greed).

The standard stall size created to fit the male proportions leads to issues for women, people with disabilities, and parents or caretakers. The time needed to enter a stall, remove garments, sit down, use toilet paper, and redress in the confined spaces of the stall is a disadvantage that men using urinals do not have to bear. Imbedded in this is the need for changing tables, handicap bars, and sanitary disposal bins that were not accounted for in the design of many public bathrooms. Often architecture produces the minimum requirements for public toilets to meet ADA standards, but forgets to think about the user. There is no code in place to protect the dimensions of stall needed for women to appropriately use the restroom in the public domain (Ramster and Greed).

Along with the inconsiderate design of the public toilet for women, the lack of public toilets for women in public places continues to be a serious issue. The nineteenth century societal norm of women not working or visiting public spaces created spaces that only had male public toilets. Many government buildings and public offices did not have a women’s toilet room and needed a space for them. This led to public toilets for women, as well as other marginalized persons, being placed further away than the men’s toilet when women began to enter these workplaces. Women were sent somewhere else to use the toilet, or through a long trek to get there. Some women were often left with no option to use the toilet (Anthony and Dufresne)

In many public spaces, the number of public toilets for men were often double or triple the number of public toilets for women. This has since developed into more equal numbers of public toilets for women compared to men; however, having equal public toilets for men and women does not necessarily provide equal experiences. Due to the layout of stalls and the addition of urinals for men, public restroom trips average a man about 30 seconds upon entering. For women, the time taken to use the bathroom averaged just under three minutes. This timing does not account for waiting in line to use a public toilet. In places where there are more public toilets for men, or even equal numbers of public toilet rooms, women still face long lines waiting to use the restroom (Anthony and Dufresne).

In the time spent by women finding, using, and returning from a trip to a public toilet, men are likely to use the time productively in a workplace setting. Not only does the time spent in the bathroom serve as an inconvenience to women at events, but it can take precious time away from important daily life. Their voices are left out of important meetings or informal conversations where they are needed to be heard. Decision making to create public toilets and the design of them continues to be by male dominated fields such as architecture and planning. The 17 percent of registered female architects in 2020 makes it clear this issue is still just as prevalent today as it was from the beginning of the modern public toilet (Anthony and Dufresne).

The number of public toilets and the placement of them is also a sanitary and public health issue for marginalized groups. For women who menstruate finding a toilet can be what feels like a life or death situation. While this isn’t often the case, menstruation proves a serious issue for women. The idea of privacy and the social virtue of hiding women’s bodily functions goes beyond number one and two. Menstruation is culturally something to be hidden away and kept hush hush. The stall design in public toilets is cramped and leaves little room for women to take care of themselves in a situation of menstruation. Without properly sanitary and private restrooms, those who menstruate are at a disadvantage (Greed, Cara).

Many places cannot provide women with these facilities, keeping them at home and out of places of work and education. This furthers the disparity between them and their male counterparts. The lack of these public toilets and the time spent waiting to get to them, creates a hazard of potential toxic shock syndrome or bleeding onto clothes if they cannot change their sanitary products in time. Architecture and design have not changed the normative outcome for public toilets since the late nineteenth century and has not grown to fit the demands of modern society and public restrooms. This is also evident by the continuation in sex separated spaces in the post sexual revelation society and gender nonconforming persons (Anthony and Dufresne).

Being pregnant is also a circumstance specific to those who menstruate. This entails the need to use the bathroom more frequently than non-pregnant counterparts due to pressure on the bladder. Having a pregnant belly also requires much more space within a public toilet and demands the needs of more accessible spaces with grab bars and extra room. After the birth of a child, women need private and clean spaces to breastfeed as well as deal with post-partum bleeding. The majority of women are the primary caretaker of their children and need to take children with them into public restrooms. For young children prone to wandering, mothers have a need for extra room or the accessible stall to keep these children nearby. The standard stall for one average sized male does not work for women in a caretaking role (Serlin, David).

Disability and Gender Issues

Caretaking is not specific to women with children. In the context of people with disabilities, the gendering of public toilets by default causes the gendering of disabled toilets. Inequality is faced by people with disabilities is prevalent in the realm of the public toilet. While the majority of United States cities had common public toilets throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the design lacked accessibility and functionality for people with disabilities. When the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 implemented curb cuts and ramps, they provided innovations of grab bars, lowered sinks and more to be instated in private homes for the disabled. The installations of these familiar standards were not finalized until 1980, when the larger stalls and curved floors were implemented to assist the disabled (Serlin, David).  

For the majority of the twentieth century, the design and manufacturing of bathroom necessities, toilets, sinks, stalls, were unmindful of the body with special needs. Toilet design was at the height of ergonomic, industrial design, and anthropometry that created and unwavering sense of what normal should be for a physical body. The designs neglected any body type that was seen as atypical and further excluded those with disabilities from the public eye (Serlin, David).

            As ADA regulations state the minimums needed for design, the accommodations often are made to feel different. The furthers the notions of separate but not equal, especially in facilities like public bathrooms for those with disabilities. Design needs to be based on more than just the radius it takes a wheelchair to navigate a stall, but rather should create spaces in public restrooms that feel inclusive and welcoming to those with any sort of disability or special need. The benefit of making the able-bodied build environment more friendly to the disabled also can benefit those only temporarily disabled, the elderly, parents pushing strollers, or people who are overweight. The stereotypical design of the public toilet and stalls neglect many of these realities

            Another issue present with disability is the notion of dependency. Those with a disability may often times need a caregiver or potentially just need a little extra help. The idea of needing this help is viewed primarily to be feminine. This view along with the contrast of private female spheres versus male public spheres is important to note. People with disability being hidden from the public eye and only having access to stalls in which they must relieve themselves in “female form” creates the gendered space. Men with disabilities cannot perform the masculine task of using a urinal but instead must relieve themselves sitting down. The space itself requires more than the average male public toilet and therefore is combined with the mentality of the ladies’ room (Serlin, David).

Class and Race Implications

 

Lower income and unhoused persons are another marginalized group when it comes to the public toilet. In 1858 when the sewer system was being added to most parts of London, many slum areas and their residents were not able to afford the new technology. They were forced to continually live among cesspools until laws were passed and sewer systems reached all houses. The pay a penny model for public toilets was another barrier to those with little to no income. Although the 1970s the banishment of pay restrooms was in motion, the majority stores only provide bathroom door codes for paying customers (Richards, Katie).

For those without houses, going to the bathroom is an added pressure. In 2011, a Starbucks in New York began to lock their bathrooms. They were frequently being used as a replacement for public bathrooms due to the lack thereof in the city. The buzz surrounding the ordeal raised the need for adequate and sanitary public toilets for all, but especially for those who have no other choice (Barnard, Anne). The previous disparities experienced by women in relation to the public toilet are increasingly problematic for homeless women as well. Homelessness is a crisis that needs the proper facilities to take care of, including the unchosen act of using the bathroom.   

Another Starbucks created public toilet trouble in the name of racial segregation in 2018. The Philadelphia barista denied access to the bathroom and had police called to escort two black men out of the store. Claims that they had not purchased anything were they only justification. America has a long history of segregating toilet rooms by race by the signs that read Whites Only and Colored Only (Glanton, Dahleen). In most cases, there were gendered white toilets but only one toilet for people of color. The past mentality of safety and sanitary laws that separated women and men in public toilets did not seem to matter if it were for black men and women. Black women in the height of segregation were not given the privilege of privacy like other women at the time.

Conclusion

Race, houselessness, class, ability and sexual orientation are intersectional attributes to the oppression of women in the sphere of public toilets. The design, location, and quantity of public toilets contribute to the disadvantages women face daily in history and in modern society. Architects and planners have work to do in order to bridge the gaps in public toilet equality. Design efforts to create nongendered public toilets and policy changes to allow for more unisex and family restrooms are beginning the conversation about how to find equity in public toilets. The implication for designers to create new ways of interacting with toilets could reflect other changes in the bathroom surrounding hygiene and design. In light of 2020 and the post covid era, public toilet design is bound to change from a hygienic standard. Designers working on these changes need to be aware of the societal factors that must influence a modern public toilet design.

 

Bibliography

 

Anthony, Kathryn H., and Meghan Dufresne. “Potty Parity in Perspective: Gender and Family Issues in Planning and Designing Public Restrooms.” Journal of Planning Literature, vol. 21, no. 3, Feb. 2007, pp. 267–294, doi:10.1177/0885412206295846.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0885412206295846#articleCitationDownloadContainer

 

Barnard, Anne. “Baristas Lock Restrooms, but the Revolt Doesn’t Last.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 23 Nov. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/nyregion/starbucks-mutiny-exposes-new-yorks-reliance-on-chains-toilets.html.

 

Greed, Clara. “Taking women’s bodily functions into account in urban planning and policy: public toilets and menstruation.” Town Planning Review, vol. 87, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2016, p. 505+. GaleAcademicOneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A466167283/AONE?u=euge94201&sid=AONE&xid=3ba1cd3a. Accessed 6 Feb. 2021.

 

Greed, Clara. “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 117-141.

 

Kogan, Terry S. “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 141-164.

 

Glanton, Dahleen. “America’s Problems with Race Start (but Don’t End) at Your Starbucks Bathroom.” Chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, 20 May 2019, www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-met-dahleen-glanton-toilets-discrimination-20180418-story.html.

 

Mokdad, Allaa. “Public Toilets and the Implications In/For Architecture by Allaa Mokdad.” YouTube, YouTube, 23 Nov. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii6DtUhdqz8.

 

Ramster, Gail, Greed, Clara, and Bichard, Jo-Anne. “How Inclusion Can Exclude: The Case of Public Toilet Provision for Women.” Built Environment (London. 1978) 44.1 (2018): 52-76. Web.

 

Richards, Katie. “It is a Privilege to Pee”: The Rise and Demise of the Pay Toilet in America.” 2018. The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 47 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol47/iss1/3

 

Penner, Barbara. Bathroom, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=1707062.

 

Serlin, David. “Pissing without Pity: Disability, Gender, and the Public Toilet.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 117-141.

 

Toilet : Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotch, and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=865705.

 

 

 

 

 

Image Citation

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/health/public-restrooms-safety-coronavirus-pandemic-wellness/index.html

https://www.swansea.ac.uk/humanandhealthsciences/news-and-events/latest-news/makepublictoiletsdementia-friendlyexpertscallforbetterdesignandsignage.php

Anthony, Kathryn H., and Meghan Dufresne. “Potty Parity in Perspective: Gender and Family Issues in Planning and Designing Public Restrooms.” Journal of Planning Literature, vol. 21, no. 3, Feb. 2007, pp. 267–294, doi:10.1177/0885412206295846.https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0885412206295846#articleCitationDownloadContainer

Serlin, David. “Pissing without Pity: Disability, Gender, and the Public Toilet.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 117-141.

 

 

Art of the Public Restroom

Mar 15, 2021 | final paper, Graduate | 0 comments

Introduction

Architecture and art are reflections of cultures on the historical timeline. They reveal a society’s values, attitudes and way of life that are particular to that culture in a specific era. A lens can be more directly focused on a society when looking at the architecture and art of public restrooms (ssinowitz 1). The restroom magnifies the evolving character of a nation, the shifting of sensibilities in people and their tolerances for acceptable behavior in public. By focusing on the architecture and art of public restrooms four issues will be addressed:  homosexuality, wealth, consumerism, and fetishes. First, Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain sheds light on the homosexual sub-culture of the era, securing the art of the urinal a place in history. Second, a solid-gold plumbed toilet at the Guggenheim Museum confronts income inequality and the American Dream in all its absurdity. Third, the Japanese culture of cleanliness translates into consumerism by educating foreigners with their hi-tech toilet designs. Finally, the carnivalesque is revealed in fetish style restrooms that provoke and deviate from accepted social norms. Considering architecture and art are reflections of a culture, the designs and installations of artistic public restrooms offer keen insight into a society’s views on homosexuality, wealth, consumerism and fetishes, revealing a society’s values at a specific point in time.

Fountain’s Queer History

Marcel Duchamp “Fountain” New York City, 1917. It went missing soon after this image was made. Photo by Alfred Stieglitz, NYC.

Marcel Duchamp not only challenged the art world in 1917 with his “readymade” urinal entitled Fountain, he intended to confront society’s lack of recognition of homosexuality. By signing the inverted urinal with a pseudonym R. Mutt and submitting it to New York’s newly established Society of Independent Artists, he attempted to subvert the standards of aesthetics by undermining the idea that art was sacred, while also shedding light on the homosexual sub-culture of the era. “While the interwoven histories of pissoirs and male-male public sex may not have been part of Duchamp’s life story,” they are components of Fountain (Franklin 23). Although most writing and reflection about Fountain pertains to critics dismissing it as a vulgar joke or a clever appropriation of an object that was not actually a work of art, they were missing Duchamp’s true intention of the piece. Marcel Duchamp was actually intending to acknowledge the 1917 gay community thriving in public men’s rooms throughout New York, Paris and beyond.

Duchamp was on the board of the Society of Independent Artists, but they were unaware Fountain was his submission and overrode their own rule of ‘no jury’ to exclude the urinal from the show. Proclaiming the dismissal was based on the grounds that it was vulgar and “may be a very useful object in its place…it is by no definition, a work of art” (Franklin 32). Duchamp resigned from the board in protest, and probably believed that the true reason Fountain was rejected remained unsaid.

Fountain separated from its original function is put into a context that subverts its meaning and offers a new truth to the purpose of its exhibition. The choice of the ready-made urinal was a conscious decision to display and exhibit an object that becomes a sign of something deeper in society. After all, the “difference between ready-made products and works of art is not their physical properties, but in their hidden concepts” (Xiaoling 2).  Fountain brought to light the gay sub-culture in public urinals, which was a topic the civilized art community didn’t want to address, so they covered up their true denial by changing the subject. They made the issue about the definition of art instead. Duchamp may have believed that the group wanted to avoid addressing the homosexual connotations that the urinal revealed. His choice of a urinal as his readymade echoed a kind of fetish symbol for homosexual encounters. Considering this makes one believe that the protests by the Society of Independent Artists were basically because they didn’t want to acknowledge the sub-culture of the gay community. The group may have feared exposure of homosexual activity within their own ranks if they didn’t condemn Fountain at the onset.

Pissoir, Paris, France, 1865-70 The phallic design is prominent. Photo by Charles Marville.

Rrose Selavy, Duchamp’s alter ego, New York City, 1923. Photo by Man Ray

During the 19th and early 20th centuries in New York, Paris and other cities, public urinals or pissoirs, were cultural concerns on several levels. City planners and health officials voiced concerns of placement and public health, but the underlying threat that worried them most was male homosexuality (Franklin 23). Officials and social reformers were convinced that “male homosexuals…were attracted to public toilets just as moths were to street lights” (Franklin23). This turn of the century blessing of sanitation had morphed into a queer playground for the homosexual community, which had not been so visible on the streets before. Public restrooms may be markers of civility, but can also be places for social threat (Penner 12). There were already New York and Paris sub-cultures with gay pornography that depicted men engaging in sexual acts in pissoirs and men’s rooms (Franklin 29). It was as if these artworks were advertising the fact that this is where to go for gay sex. Coded messages were scrawled on the pissoir walls inviting men to meet in “tearooms” at prescribed times using pseudonyms. Tearooms were local cafes, but in this context they were gay slang for “t”oilet rooms (Franklin 40). Pseudonyms were a huge part of the gay sub-culture and one can assume that Duchamp’s signature of R. Mutt on Fountain reflected the notion of concealing identity. He also took on an alter ego in 1920 as Rrose Selavy and began dressing in drag (Cork 3). Surrealist photographer, Man Ray, immortalized Duchamp in his iconic image of Rrose Selavy, which was most likely another subversive attempt at drawing attention to the gay sub-culture of the time. Although Duchamp claimed to be heterosexual, he defended homosexuality and his connections with that community.

The cultural taboos of the era were on high alert when Duchamp introduced Fountain in 1917; luckily Alfred Stieglitz photographed it before it was lost to history. Since then, Duchamp was commissioned in the 1950s to make several replicas of his famous urinal, which are on display at the finest museums around the world (Cromwell 2). In 2004 Duchamp’s Fountain received the honor from over 400 scholars as being “the most influential artwork of the 20th century” (Cromwell 2). Duchamp probably never imagined the impact his ready-made urinal would have on the art world and society as a whole well into the 21st century. It could be argued that he changed the trajectory of future acceptance of the gay community by challenging the taboos of the culture early on.

Gay Marriage by Elmgreen and Dragset, Norway 2010. The tangle of pipes create a physical union. Photo by Matthias Kolb

Many would contend that Duchamp never intended to confront society with the homosexual sub-culture because they focused on the Society of Independent Artist’s argument that Fountain was simply a monkey wrench that Duchamp threw to subvert the sacredness of fine art. However, most writers and art historians miss his true genius by following this common dialogue.  After extensive research, Duchamp proved to be more clever than that and had a broader vision of the future of art to be simply labeled a trickster. His intension with Fountain jolted a culture that embraced 19th century taboos and pushed them into a 20th century mentality of undeniable reality regarding the homosexual community.

Through the decades that followed, Duchamp’s Fountain has conceived many generations of urinal art, although today’s gay community is out in the open and accepted in many cultures. Dutch and Norwegian artists Elmgreen and Dragset have made their mark in art history following Duchamp. Their sculptural installation, Gay Marriage 2010 is a direct homage to Duchamp (Vestner 2). It is a pair of men’s room urinals whose pipes intertwine below, declaring their intimate connection openly. Gay Marriage, is a contemporary reference to the acceptance of male unions, but alludes back to a time when men arranged secret rendezvous in public restrooms for gay sex. A major theme in all of Elmgreen and Dragset’s work is to alter what is expected, so they are seen differently, unnaturally; in other words, queer. Their work plays on humor and challenges the viewer’s perceptions, much like Duchamp in 1917. As homage to Duchamp, generations of artists have echoed Fountain’s taboo of “queer sexual desire” (Penner 12).

Considering architecture and art are reflections of culture on the historical timeline, Duchamp’s outing of public restrooms and pissoirs mark the beginning of the 20th century with recognition of a homosexual sub-culture. He clearly intended to shed light into the gay community and bring it out of the shadows and exhibit it as readily as Fountain is exhibited today in fine museums. The cultural reflection of the art of the urinal on the historical timeline has transformed over the decades, but it is still a bell weather report on how a society rejects or accepts homosexuality.

America’s American Dream

Maurizio Cattelan’s “America” 2016 The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation Photo: Kristopher McKay Copyright: © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Cattelan’s “America” is a fully functioning solid gold toilet installed at the Guggenheim Museum in 2016.

Just as Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain reflected homosexual tensions in the culture of the early 20th century, a golden toilet exposes wealth disparity in 21st century American culture. Maurizio Cattelan’s America is an 18 karat gold toilet plumbed as an interactive art installation at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum in 2016. Considering this toilet from a socioeconomic perspective, it amplifies the increasing divide in America between the wealthy and the poor, pointing out economic inequity within our society. This controversial work of art embodies the illusion and contradiction of the American Dream.

America is a critique on the inequality and economic disparity that is polarizing society today. America is both a mocking and blistering criticism on America’s socioeconomic climate. This golden toilet functions as an industrial artwork and a social commentary, addressing civil and economic conditions. Titling it America is a direct condemnation of the inequity and economic gap that is part of our national fabric on the historical timeline today.

Cattelan sarcastically transformed a bathroom designed for sanitation and disposal of waste into a room of indulgence and privilege. He said, “Whatever you eat, a two hundred dollar lunch or a two dollar hotdog, the results are the same, toiletwise” (Spector 10). The artist exaggerates the preposterous luxuries that are normally accessible only to the wealthy. It is a reflection of the American obsession with luxury and consumerism, mocking our attraction to shiny objects.

Cattelan directly addresses our cultural-economic divide by creating this toilet that he describes as “one-percent art for the ninety-nine percent” (Spector 9). Over 100 thousand people of all genders, races and economic backgrounds have lined up, for as long as two hours, for the opportunity to pee or poop on this 18 karat gold throne. America lampoons the idea of the American Dream by allowing visitors to commune with the toilet privately for just a few minutes. Clearly we all share the same needs when it comes to bodily functions, but the need is where the equality ends. Good government with the people’s welfare in mind is what is necessary for the American Dream to exist, but government has fallen short since the 1950s. After WWII the government sponsored the GI Bill that enabled the average Joe to buy a home. On the cultural timeline, the middle class was at its strongest point than any other time in our history, but has weakened over the decades. Museum visitors’ brief interaction on the golden toilet symbolizes the hypocrisy and delusion that the American Dream is still attainable to anyone in our American system of wealth.

The meaning of the American Dream had changed from focusing on social values, freedom and dignity in the 1930s, to home ownership in the 1950s, to wealth and luxury today (Shillar 1). Throughout the last 40 years, the government has taken steps in taxation and minimum wage freezes that have benefitted the 1% at the expense of the 99%, in direct contrast to the original values of the American Dream. When Trump was elected president in 2016, he moaned about making America great again, beckoning the American Dream of the 1950s. Unfortunately, his notion of 1950’s society was a time of white male supremacy, ethnic segregation and female suppression. His vision had nothing to do with equality or a level playing field. Cattelan’s America smacks of the excess and elitism that Trump personifies. Some viewers of America may feel duped or played waiting two hours to put a butt down on a gold toilet seat, similarly to the way they may feel about being duped by Trump as president. The gold toilet is a shiny metaphor for how America is going to shit.

In 2017, the White House requested the loan of a Vincent van Gogh painting from the Guggenheim Museum, but the curator, Nancy Spector, offered Trump the loan of America instead. She explained that the 18 karat gold toilet could be installed for use in the president’s private quarters. This small protest of the president went viral because the gesture of the offer was an “act of resistance, rebellion and revolt…speaking truth to power” (Saltz 4). The offer of loaning this golden throne to President Trump for his personal use in the White House sparked deeper analysis of the artwork, by putting it into a political context. In the context of America being Trump’s private shitter, it became a symbol of his elitism and his blindness to the division that he has sown in our society. At that time, Trump was already making his legacy known as a divider of our country socially, economically and ethnically.

Jade Solomon tends “America” every 15 minutes . Photo: Ralph Gardner Jr. /Wall Street Journal

Ironically, low-wage workers at the Guggenheim Museum cleaned America every 15 minutes. Jade Solomon, a contract worker who cleaned the artwork, explained how she thought America was beautiful, but felt letdown when she went home to her own toilet, so she considered “bedazzling” it (Gardner 3-4). Apparently, now we must create our own American Dream. The paradox of a minimum wage worker, cleaning a $2.5 million toilet on her knees 32 times a day is an acute reflection of income inequality in our culture today.

In an incredible twist of fate, America was stolen in 2019 when on loan to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England. The palace was the ancestral home of Winston Churchill for 300 years before becoming the Blenheim Art Foundation (Brown 2). Edward Spencer-Churchill was overjoyed at the prospect of using the golden throne. He quipped “despite being born with a silver spoon in my mouth I have never had a s.h.i.t. on a golden toilet, so I look forward to it” (Brown 6). The notion delighted the pompous heir with a sense of elite privilege. Caretakers of the estate laughed off concerns of theft since the gold toilet was plumbed in, but thieves managed the heist anyway (O’Grady 1). One can only hope this theft was a kind of Robin Hood inspired caper, stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but that’s unlikely. The fate of the golden throne is still unknown, but most investigators and Cattelan himself believe it has been melted down to the tune of $4 million dollars (O’Grady 2).

The theft of America has amplified the diverse interpretations of the artwork. It is a shining example of America’s income inequality, obsession with luxury and a depiction of the failing American Dream in our society at this point on the historical timeline, but it’s more than that. The theft alludes to contemporary society waking up from this false American Dream, finally aware that it is within their power to redistribute wealth. The gold toilet becomes a symbol for taxation and minimum wage laws that need to be changed by the government who represent all the people, not just the 1%.

Toto’s Toilet Theater

Toto Galley 2015 Photo: Toto Gallery Narita Airport, Japan Japanese toilet manufacturer TOTO has created an art gallery — within a public restroom — at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. Silhouettes of dancing toilet users promote the Japanese toilet culture of cleanliness.

Cattelan’s golden toilet pointed out wealth disparity in America, but the hunger for consumerism is alive and well America, as well as Japan. No two cultures may have as much in common regarding consumerism as America and Japan, but their similarities stop at the bathroom door. Both societies embrace a 21st century addiction to consumerism and keeping up to date with the latest technology in the global marketplace, except when it comes to the toilet. Comedians, exaggerating the serious cultural attitudes towards anal hygiene, have parodied the Japanese penchant for cleanliness and hi-tech wizardry in the bathroom. Americans on the other hand, have been spoofed for not even washing their hands after using the toilet. Bathroom habits reflect these cultures in two different lights, making the Japanese appear to be a more advanced and civilized society by valuing their customs of toilet hygiene.

Japan’s 2015 Toilet of the Year Award went to Klein Dytham Architecture for their installation of Toto products at Narita Airport in Japan (Zach 574). Toto, the world’s largest toilet manufacturer, commissioned the design of the public restrooms as an art gallery featuring their toilets and fixtures as works of art (Xiaoling 1). The façade of the public restroom is a multicolored, LED screen on translucent walls that feature soft silhouettes of virtual people using the toilet, dancing and sweeping through the space. Toto promotes using their facilities as an inspiring experience, which is reflected in users and observers alike (Frearson 1).

This public restroom is like no other in the world because it becomes a virtual theater. At first sight, Americans may be leery of entering because it screams of exhibitionism and a total lack of privacy. Cleverly, the design fabricates a sense of immodesty, without actually breaking decent behavioral norms. Nevertheless, nature calls after a long flight and one has little choice but to join in the theatrical experience. As daunting as the facilities may appear from outside, inside proves to be an inspiring Japanese cultural experience.

Toto Gallery 2015 Photo: Toto Gallery The shoji style LED façade is illuminated with virtual figures using the facilities at Narita Airport, Japan.

There is an artistic irony of illusion that a person is on full display to every passerby, when actually it is quite private. The LED walls mimic traditional translucent Japanese shoji screens that offer partial privacy. It’s a very interesting paradox that the privacy Americans expect when using a toilet is virtually on full display at Narita Airport. Most Americans anticipate a public restroom to be a closed off environment with banks of static stalls that one hopes to be clean enough to use. They are not relaxed talking about bodily functions or even using public restrooms because their experience is that they are dirty, smelly and even dangerous. Toto’s public restroom at Narita Airport is likely a surreal experience for most first-time travelers to Japan, not just because of the pseudo exhibitionist display, but also because of the toilets themselves.

Toto uses the public restroom to advertise their toilets, which respond to your voice commands, warm your bottom, vibrate, and most uniquely wash your bum and blow it dry. They create an environment of sounds and smells that negate the actual business at hand. Toto gallery educates travelers about the Japanese philosophy of bathroom hygiene, while promoting their state of the art Toto products. Toto wants to spread the Japanese culture of toilet hygiene to international visitors so the airport is the perfect location for their art gallery showroom. Foreigners get a chance to experience the beauty of Toto’s products as soon as they arrive and Toto hopes to attract new customers with every flush. Their firm’s design transformed the public restroom into a work of art and cultural propaganda. While promoting the superiority of their product, Toto is making a cultural statement about the priorities, traditions and values of the Japanese people.

Americans are likely to be intimidated by the technology of the Toto facilities. After all, United States airports are not known for advancements beyond rotating plastic seat covers and touchless faucets. The highest technology in US public restrooms is the cell phones that are brought in by users and consulted while sitting on the can. Americans are reluctant to change their bathroom habits even though “U.S. toilets are effectively bedpans with a drain” says Bill Strang, President of Toto USA (Xiaoling 1). While Toto toilets offer music, bidet washing, seat warming, dryers and deodorizing, the American Standard toilets only feature one option, the final flush (Frearson 1). Toto would love to expand their state of the art products in the United States, but realize without education and advertisement this stagnant market remains constipated.

The consumerist culture in Japan rivals the U.S. in that they spend more on consumer items than they reserve in savings (Zacharopoulou 575). The Japanese focus on technology and innovation and are willing to pay for it, especially in bathrooms. Toto is the largest bathroom manufacturer in the world, offering the highest priced porcelain on the planet. It seems natural for the Japanese consumer to invest in Toto bathroom fixtures as a sign of status and civility. They want to spread that Japanese mentality and Toto’s Narita Airport is the perfect venue.

So why are Americans so far behind the Japanese in their cultural bathroom expectations? Bathroom habits may seem to be a simple matter of normal hygiene, but they’re actually social conditioning of a culture. Americans are taught how to use the toilet in our culture. Potty training is a rite of passage in America, when children are out of diapers and mom doesn’t have to wipe your bum for you marks a milestone. What may seem weird for the Japanese, like using tons of toilet paper and tossing it into the toilet, it is perfectly normal for Americans, who are most likely the number one consumers of toilet paper in the world. Considering public restrooms are a reflection of a culture at a particular time, the Japanese and Americans are both global consumers, but definitely spend their money differently when it comes to the bathroom.

Carnivalesque Counter Culture

“Kisses” designed by Meike van Schijndel, Amsterdam,2000. Photo: Meike van Schijndel

After considering societal reflections on homosexuality, wealth disparity and consumerism regarding the public restroom, it’s time for the final social kicker; carnivalesque men’s rooms. There is a cultural sideshow trajectory in public male restrooms reflecting a garish light on the social norms of global societies. These carnivalesque urinals can be viewed as creating a counter culture in accepted social behavior. There is much to be revealed about fetishes and human nature in this newest trend in men’s restrooms. Carnivalesque restrooms have become popular in Europe, Australia, Japan and the USA. The popularity of carnivalesque restrooms primarily thrives in affluent commercial venues that celebrate status and exclusivity. With the surge of global capitalism, also rises an amplified promotion of personal desire and hunger for self-gratification, even at the most basic levels of satisfaction, like urination (Bernier-Cast 21).

Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term “carnivalesque” in the early 20th century. It evolved from the word carnival, referring to the popular festivals that swept across Europe since Medieval times (Bernier-Cast 21). Carnival spirit grows out of a culture of laughter, where seriousness is abandoned for humor or even chaos. It is a radical humor that is liberation from the accepted norms of society. Carnival celebrates our base as humans:  birth, death, sexuality, ingestion, and evacuation, which are things all humans have in common.

During carnival, rules, restrictions, and inhibitions of polite society are suspended to reveal the darker or hidden side of our nature that can be freely expressed. The emphasis being on “living outside of oneself” when a “second truth” is demonstrated openly (Lachmann 124). The bizarre fetish is on full display embracing the “irrational, inane, violent, sexual and vulgar” (Bernier-Cast 23). This breech of accepted social behavior is celebrated during carnival, making carnivalesque the perfect adjective to describe this trend in men’s public restrooms. Posh hotels and casinos morph the basic need to pee into a performance art experience and they relish in the novelty.

Let’s explore several examples of men’s restroom and urinal designs that embody a variety of different aspects of carnivalesque mentality that confront social norms. Each scenario, experience and performance caters to the passions of indulgence and self-gratification. Entry into these men’s rooms marks a departure from the ordinary world and sheds light onto the attraction of revealing the hidden side of our human nature. As strange as these urinals may seem, they mark a cultural marker on the historical timeline.

The famous Kisses urinals, made in the Netherlands by Bathroom Mania, crosses a moral line following the carnivalesque philosophy. These banks of female, glossy red lipped, open-mouthed urinals tap the grotesque aspects of carnivalesque and are found in men’s rooms worldwide. Men perversely urinate into the mouths of these huge mouthed working girls. First response may be a laugh and a shake of the head, however, in 2010 a coalition of women’s groups successfully petitioned to have Kisses removed from a Canadian restaurant on the grounds that they promoted aggression, sadism and violence against women (Bernier-Cast 31). They are profoundly crass in their display, as well as their utilization. Peeing into a mouth clearly crosses the line of civilized behavior. Objections are plentiful and understandable, yet they remain popular worldwide.

Sao Joao de Madeira Shopping Plaza men’s room, Portugal, 2008. Photo: Jose Manuel Ribeiro/Reuters

The male public restrooms of Portugal’s Sao Joao de Madeira Shopping Plaza look like the red light district in Amsterdam. Female mannequins appear to be whores in sexually explicit stances around each urinal. They are provocatively dressed suggesting a sexual fantasy comes with every pee (Bernier-Cast 32). Pressing boundaries of sexual desire and forbidden acts resonate in the carnivalesque mentality, but are deviant examples of accepted behavior in public. Portugal’s society is being challenged with this carnivalesque restroom being available to males of every age in a public shopping mall. Fear and confusion may startle unsuspecting users, which is a striking contradiction to the values of a cultured society.

The Sofitel Luxury Hotel in Queensland, Australia plays on voyeurism where projections of virtual women judge, photograph and inspect the men at the urinals. One virtual woman holds a tape measure appearing to size up the penises in front of her. This surveillance and mock recording is all part of the carnivalesque atmosphere (Bernier-Cast 32). An attraction to women who belittle, criticize and put down men is a psychological disorder of some sort, but a carnivalesque game nonetheless. Reaction to these public restrooms by men is often decidedly in contrast to female reaction of disgust. The “boys will be boys” mentality only goes so far before crossing the line of accepted social behavior, so Australia is also provoking an upheaval of customary values.

As often as urinals can be humorous, they can also be denigrating, which is another facet of carnivalesque attitude. The Century 21 Museum Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky promotes the sensation of being watched, by placing their waterfall urinals in front of a two-way mirror, which allows the user to see into the public dining room. To add to this voyeuristic pleasure, peeking eyes are projected within the mirror, mimicking the voyeuristic experience in reverse. One visitor expressed that he loved the sensory pleasure of urinating on the people on the other side of the mirror as they dine, while being spied upon as he pees. He compared it to “shadowboxing…acting out his aggression with no ill effects to the unsuspecting patrons on the other side of the mirror (Bernier-Cast 32). This passive violence performance solidifies the carnivalesque spirit by mocking decent behavior and creating an alternative reality. Several questions come to mind regarding who is privy to this theater of perversion. Do all patrons realize what’s going on in the men’s room? Do men return to the table and share what they discovered or is this a kind of male pact that remains unsaid to the ladies? Have gentlemen left with their families in disgust? So much of this mentality is a mystery, but strikes at the core of what Americans consider being socially accepted decency.

Mikhail Bakhtin proposed that carnivalesque acts become agents of long lasting social change by rallying a rebellious spirit in a population. So are these carnivalesque restrooms for men simply platitudes offered to half the population as a promise of social change or are they true beacons of radical reform? Some theorists of the late 20th century, like Umberto Eco and Terry Eagleton, challenge Mikhail Bakhtin’s carnivalesque ideas about creating social change through these provocative urinals. They propose that this liberation is not a rebellion, but a game allowed by authorities in charge to make one feel like they are defiant and free to express their personal desires, when in fact nothing has changed once they zip up and exit the stage of the restroom (Bernier-Cast 33). However, the aura of the experience remains with the user and can affect behavior and attitudes beyond the public restroom. Their promotion may be sparking a shift of social tolerances.

Clearly, carnivalesque men’s rooms circumvent accepted norms in societies. They sidestep the values of civility, offering a brief fetish fantasy while men pee. Viewing carnivalesque men’s rooms through an anthropomorphic lens, one can focus on a possible backlash to unisex or family public restrooms that may invade or threaten a solidly male domain. The fear of emasculation amplifies a deviant behavior in these fetish styled men’s rooms, marking new cultural reflections on the historic timeline.

Conclusion

As architecture and art are reflections of cultures on the historical timeline, the broader question may be what do women say about public restroom behavior and design, because women’s voices are finally being heard in our evolving culture. Yes, men have directed all aspects of society until now, but clearly the public is heading toward a more inclusive and tolerant society that women have a say in. The four issues addressed in this research reflect a shifting society that understands the impact public restrooms has on a culture. Duchamp’s Fountain exposed the homosexual community in the 20th century, while Cattelan’s golden toilet revealed 21st century America’s wealth disparity and loss of the American Dream. Furthermore, Toto advertised their Japanese cultural superiority with their state of the art products at Narita Airport in Japan. Finally, carnivalesque men’s rooms swept the globe with their deviant aspects of counter culture men’s rooms facing public objections. The public restrooms amplify the evolving character of nations and shifting sensibilities in people and their tolerances for acceptable public behavior. Ultimately, history must leave it to women to sort out the shortcomings of their male counterparts, marking the historical timeline as a community that strives for an inclusive, equal and dignified culture that provides equal and civilized public restrooms for all.

 

 

 

Bibliography

Bernier-Cast, Karen. “Gargoyles, Kisses and Clowns: A Study of Carnivalesque Male Urinals and Restrooms.” Material Culture, vol. 43, no. 1, 2011, pp. 21–39.

Brown, Mark. “Flushed with Success: Solid-Gold Toilet to Be Installed at Blenheim; Visitors Will Be Able to Spend 18-Carat Gold Penny When Artwork Arrives at Country House in Autumn.” The Guardian (London), 2019.

Cork, Richard. “HOW DUCHAMP MADE A SPLASH (and Changed Art Forever).” Independent (London, England : 1986), 2004, p. 16.

Cromwell, Bob. “Toilets as Modern and Contemporary Art: The Fluxus Movement and Others.” Toilets of the World, 7 March 2021, www.toilet-guru.com/fluxus.php.

Franklin, Paul B. “Object Choice: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and the Art of Queer Art History.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 2000, pp. 25–50.

Frearson, Amy. “Japan’s ‘Toilet of the Year’ Seems to Offer No Privacy.” Dezeen, 31 Oct. 2015, www.dezeen.com/2015/10/29/klein-dytham-architecture-toilet-of-the-year-gallery-toto-narita-airport-tokyo-japan/.

Jr, Ralph Gardner. “A Gold Toilet That’s Worth the Weight; The Lines Are Long at the Guggenheim for Maurizio Cattelan’s 18-Karat Gold Toilet.” The Wall Street Journal. Eastern Edition, 2016.

Lachmann, R. “Bakhtin and Carnival – Culture as Counter-Culture.” Cultural Critique, no. 11, 1989, pp. 115–152.

O’Grady, Siobhan. “Commode Caper: Someone Steals Solid-Gold Toilet — Once Offered to Trump White House — from British Palace.” Washingtonpost.com, 2019.

Penner, Barbara. “We Shall Deal Here with Humble Things.” Places (Cambridge, Mass.), no. 2012, 2012, doi:10.22269/121113.

 

Behind the seemingly “natural” gender-separated bathrooms

Mar 15, 2021 | culture, final paper, gender, Individual Research (UG), Research | 0 comments

Figure 1. Gender neutral toilet signage at a Google office inclusive to hikers, Android, batman, a pregnant lady, a man, woman, mermaid, Jedi, pirate, alien and person in a cape.

Figure 1. Gender neutral toilet signage at a Google office inclusive to hikers, Android, batman, a pregnant lady, a man, woman, mermaid, Jedi, pirate, alien and person in a cape.

The issue of gender separation in bathrooms has been a long contentious talk. Figure 1 shows one response towards this issue done by a Google office’s toilet signage that includes a picture of a hiker, Android, batman, a pregnant lady, a man, woman, mermaid, Jedi, pirate, alien and person in a cape. To understand this issue better, we’ll be going back in history of how gendered bathrooms emerged. 

Figure 2. An Ancient Roman latrine

In Pakistan’s Indus Valley, where one of the earliest baths were found, male and female used the same area for purification ritual before they entered the holy space. The Greeks and Romans used public baths and toilets as social places, as shown in Figure 2. My previous research on the Islamic view of cleanliness in bathrooms, highlighted the aspect of privacy that connects to purity and brought a different perspective that raise the notion that some body parts shall be kept private, whether it is from an opposing or same gender, with married couples being an exception (Rahmadhani and Hamid). 

While the earliest global history of bathrooms has shown that the process of urination and defecation were not a matter of privacy, the present world shows otherwise. This is apparent through the separation of gender in public bathrooms. As explored in the research paper “Sex-Separation in Public Restrooms: Law, Architecture, and Gender” by Kogan, current world views have been socially constructed to make gender-separated restrooms feel natural, even though it is not the most inclusive practice. The purpose of this essay is to help us better understand the aspects that contribute towards the emergence of gender-separated bathrooms since the nineteenth century, the role of architecture and the issues raised and over sought from having gender-separated bathrooms, all in hope to inform us in making better design decisions and approaches in the future. 

History of gender-separated restrooms

The first laws to make public restrooms separated by sex were not mandated until late nineteenth century. These laws were extensions to protective legislation aimed at women and children in the workplace that started during the second half of the nineteenth century (Kogan). The following sections will cover the first half of the nineteenth century that was known as the Age of Idealism, and the second half of the nineteenth century that was known as the Age of Realism. 

Figure 3. Cult of True Womanhood

1. The First Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Age of Idealism

In this era, workplaces were men’s domain and the place for women was at home. The “cult of True Womanhood”, as it was often referred to, was the common society’s ideology that put emphasis on women to stay domestic and in private while working on household activities. Working women have a bad connotation, as it is seen as taking skilled men’s righteous domain. Young women who worked at factories, work temporarily to fill in their time as they wait to ultimately get married. The Age of Idealism, differentiate men and women based on a matter of idealism, social propriety, and etiquette. (Kogan) 

2. The Second Half of the Nineteenth Century: The Age of Realism

 

Figure 4. Women in World War II

When men started leaving for war, the needs for more workers arose and more opportunities were available for women (Figure 4). As the number of working women increases, society’s ideology is shifting. The rise of scientific research provided facts and data concerning the inherent physical and mental distinctions and capacities between men and women, this is where the Age of Realism took place. A movement that was devoted to “verifiable knowledge and tangible concerns”, Realism infused every intellectual and artistic aspect of life in the late nineteenth century. Thorough testing and measurement are crucial to scientific research. Since the rise of science, the inherent weakness of women has been proven. Legislations aimed towards protecting women at the workplace were arising, including prohibitions of women from working in dangerous physical work or professions, prohibitions of women working promptly before or after child labor, mandates given to women for relief time for meals, prioritized seats and driving lane for women, rest period throughout the day, and directions to keep women’s health and wellness due to their reproductive capacity. (Kogan)

 

The emergence of protective labor legislation for women raised two contrary ways of thinking. One side of the coin argued that it is a positive attitude with genuine aspirations to prevent unwanted harm towards women from the heavy, rough and high-risk workplace or workload. The other side of the coin declared that it was a mere blessing in disguise, that actually an underestimation towards women’s competence and prevention for women to get offered the same opportunities as men in the workplace. The history records long-going debates on this matter. (Kogan) 

Roles of architecture, current issues, and future prototypes

Figure 5. Public bathroom layout with 50/50 split in floor space between the men’s and women’s bathrooms. Illustration by Mona Chalabi.

Architecture is not exempt from being one of the factors that contributes towards the contentious arguments on the distinctions between men and women. As Kogan have outlined, “Theories … have argued that the spatial arrangements of our buildings and communities reflect and reinforce our understandings of sex and gender, and help to define and police the sexual hierarchies that exist in our culture.” Men have often been associated with spatial planning and building constructions of the urban skyscrapers and streets, while women with domesticity, interior decorations, mixed-use and residential projects. Certain architectural theories, as observed by critical architectural theorists, have been linked with masculinity and femininity in the past; “the unadorned and simple as masculine, the adorned and ornamented as feminine; the public and outside as masculine (and heterosexual), the private and inside as feminine (and homosexual); hard surfaces as masculine, soft surfaces as feminine.” (Kogan) Most of us don’t know where these thoughts or biases come from, but it is embedded within our minds and we’ve come to accept it as the natural way. 

While architecture plays many roles in this matter, the most apparent is in the gender separation in public restrooms. In the name of equity and fairness, women and men’s public bathrooms are often made equal in square footage, locations, and even the door and signage styles. A move that over sought the distinct biological circumstances of men and women, from the type and size of fixtures, maneuvering positions, length of time for each gender when using the bathroom. As shown in Figure 5, with the “equal” floor area split between the two gendered bathrooms, the average wait time for women to use the bathroom is six minutes 19 seconds , while men wait just 11 seconds. This explains why women’s restrooms often have long lines while the men’s are empty. What was meant to foster equity, ended up creating an imbalance in facilitation.

Moreover, gender separation in public bathrooms also neglected the minorities or special needs of the individuals in our society. The socially constructed ideology of the need for gender separation have ignored the less obvious scenes. As stated by Kogan, “It all seems so obvious … unless:

  • you happen to be a wheelchair-user who needs the assistance of your opposite-sex partner in a public restroom facility.
  • you happen to be a transsexual person dressed in accord with your gender identity who is prohibited from using the workplace restroom designated for the sex with which you identify.
  • you happen to be a woman at a rock concert standing in a long line outside the restroom marked “Women,” while no line exists outside the door marked “Men.”
  • you happen to be a parent tending an opposite-sex, five-year-old child when you or your child suddenly needs a public restroom.
  • you happen to be an intersexed child, born with ambiguous genitals and/or reproductive organs, whose parents have decided (despite social pressure and pressure from the medical community) not to subject their child to surgery until the child can participate in that decision.”

The examples above present only some of the less obvious scenarios. Behind the seemingly “natural” gender-separated public restrooms, there are individuals experiencing hardships and inflicted for doing basic bodily functions in public facilities. (Kogan). Figure 6, 7, 8 below show some potential gender neutral bathroom designs emerging for the future.

Figure 7. Section diagram of Stalled’s airport restroom prototype. Joel Sanders Architect

Figure 6. Researchers considered four different bathroom layouts. Illustration: Mona Chalabi/The Guardian

Figure 6 shows 4 bathroom layouts and their respective wait time for both women and men gender. We’ve looked at the flawed 50/50 layout that creates a significant imbalance on the amount of wait time (women’s averaging at 6 minutes 19 seconds, and men’s at 11 seconds) and total number of toilets (women’s bathroom with 10 toilets, and men’s with 12) . The third layout shows equilibrium, it is the only one

Figure 8. Aerial view of Stalled’s airport restroom prototype. Joel Sanders Architect

without men’s standing urinal toilet.

 

Figure 7 and 8 show the “Stalled!”‘s airport inclusive restroom prototype by Joel Sanders Architect based in New York who worked closely with trans theorist, legal scholar, and policy analyst for accessibility. “Stalled!” focuses on creating a public and social realm to the once-isolating rest area by introducing open circulation to the bathroom, floor-to-ceiling toilet stalls, and segregation of activity zones based on the privacy level. 

Conclusion

All in all, the current global approach to gendered public restrooms is not the most inclusive and accommodative. The hard line drawn on gender distinctions is one of the many roles of architecture. Gender distinctions emerged as the society shifted from the movement of Idealism to Realism, and committed to creating a safer place for women in the workplace. Despite the over sought issues that occur afterwards, gender separation emerged for a reason as back in the old days, this wasn’t the case. Understanding that gender-separated bathrooms were not natural and getting informed with the issues that led to that decision and the issues that are currently present due to that decision, will hopefully help us be more mindful when designing future public bathrooms. 

Bibliography

Rahmadhani, Novi, and M Irfan M P Hamid. “Islamic Bathroom: A Recommendation of Bathroom Layout Design with Islamic Values”. International Journal of Architecture and Urbanism Vol. 2, No. 3, 2018 pp. 241-252. Talenta Publisher.

Kogan, Terry S. “Sex-Separation in Public Restrooms: Law, Architecture, and Gender”. Michigan Journal of Gender & Law Vol. 14, No. 1, 2017 pp. 1-57. University of Michigan. https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl/vol14/iss1/1

Spula, Ian. “An Unexpected Ally of Gender-Neutral Restrooms: Building Codes”. Architect Magazine. 2017. https://www.architectmagazine.com/practice/an-unexpected-ally-in-gender-neutral-restrooms-building-codes_o

Image Sources

Figure 1. seroundtable.com

Figure 2. daily.jstor.org

Figure 3. newyorkalmanack.com

Figure 4. womeninworldwar2history.weebly.com

Figure 5-6. theguardian.com

Figure 7-8. architectmagazine.com

Gendered Privacy: An Examination of Architectural Divisions in American Public Bathrooms

Mar 8, 2021 | final paper, Graduate, Research | 0 comments

Introduction

The advent of indoor plumbing in the first half of the 19th century brought great change not just to the United States’ sanitation and hygiene, but also to its architectural interiors. Indoor plumbing made its way into domestic, commercial, industrial, and public interiors. Architects integrated plumbing into their projects according to the values of the dominant middle- and upper-class Victorian culture. Separate bathrooms segregated men from women and partitions within those gendered spaces hid bodies from view according to the purported needs of each gender. Over time, these spatial standards were written into law and are only just beginning to be challenged today. Questioning why our public restrooms are segmented in the ways that they are, we can find answers by looking back 200 years. In order to protect women’s modesty and reinforce their role as the virtuous homemaker, Victorian American society employed deeper privacy gradients and more extensive stall partitions in women’s bathrooms, as compared to men’s bathrooms. Written into law, carved into space, and embedded in culture, these Victorian spatial standards have resisted change. Though increasingly challenged, they persist to this day.

To uncover the origins of privacy disparities in gendered bathrooms, this paper will focus on 19th and 20th century American public bathrooms. Beginning with discussion of gender segregated public spaces, I will seek to explain the reasons for the women’s bathroom lounge and the deeper privacy gradient it creates. Turning to divisions within bathrooms, I will investigate why women’s bathrooms use stall partitions more extensively than men’s bathrooms. Here, both plumbing fixture design and cultural anxieties surrounding decency, gender, and sexuality are deciding factors. Finally, looking forward, brief descriptions of recent built and proposed changes to the current status quo will demonstrate how the disparate privacy conditions in men’s and women’s bathrooms are integrated into gender neutral bathrooms today.

Gender Segregated Space

Origins of Gender Segregated Space

Public gender-segregated spaces first appeared in the first half of the 19th century, decades before the first public bathrooms. At that time, American society ascribed to what is often called the “Cult of True Womanhood,” a system of belief in woman’s superior moral sensibilities and her natural role as the virtuous homemaker. Based on an Idealist framework, it had no basis in reality. Rather, it seemed to deny the real cultural changes occurring at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. (Kogan, 19-20)

The Industrial Revolution uprooted business, commerce, and production from the home and transplanted them into the city. While men followed the workplace into the city, women largely remained at home to handle domestic labor. Separated into the public and private spheres, respectively, men and women came to be associated with different realms of life. However, it was not at all uncommon for women to participate in public life. Many joined the workforce or participated in civic life, though they were generally barred from public recreation and entertainment like parks and theaters. But soon, this too would change. (Kogan, 21-22, 23-24)

In the second half of the 19th century, it became acceptable for women to attend the theater and other public places. Uncomfortable with the contradictions between real women and the Cult of True Womanhood, Victorians turned to pseudo-science in order to maintain their idealized vision of woman. To support the separate spheres ideology, scientists used deeply flawed methods to prove the female body weaker than the male body. This evidence became the basis for laws enacted to protect supposedly fragile women who ventured out of the safety and comfort of home. Many of these laws regulated architectural space, creating dedicated female spaces in public places where they could rest and recuperate. These spaces could be found in nearly every corner of life: department stores, hotels, commercial photography studios, restaurants, banks, post offices, public parks, public libraries, and trains. Though similar spaces existed for men in many cases, women’s spaces were less formal. Their décor mimicked that of domestic interiors as a way of making women more comfortable and maintaining the association between women and domestic life (Figures 1 & 2). As bathrooms made their way into the public sphere, the same gendered logic would apply. (Kogan, 23-24, 27, 29-31, 33)

Figure 1. The ladies’ parlor at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. during the week of the 1861 presidential inauguration when men were allowed in for the special occasion. Notice the curtains and the flourishing moldings above the doors and windows.

Figure 2. The men’s parlor, reading, and sitting room at the Willard during the week of the 1861 inauguration. Compare the subdued décor to that of the women’s parlor in Figure 1.

Privacy Gradients in Gendered Bathrooms

During the first half of the 19th century, plumbing infrastructure and technology only supported single-user water closets. As a growing number of water closets were installed in public spaces, upper- and middle- class values concerning privacy influenced their design (Davis, 71). It quickly became convention to place water closets within gendered spaces like reading rooms and parlors, making them gendered as well (Yuko, par. 12). Similarly, with more women entering the workforce, factories came to include heavily regulated gendered spaces. Starting with Massachusetts in 1887, states passed laws requiring factories with male and female employees to provide gender-segregated water closets. It was also common to require separate dressing rooms, washrooms, and lunchrooms for men and women. Additionally, factories provided a resting/emergency room in case the supposedly weak and delicate women became fatigued or faint. Like other gendered spaces, these spaces could be nested within each other. For example, a bathroom could commonly be found within a women’s rest/emergency room (Figure 3). (Kogan, 40, 43)

This nested spatial strategy was not only more cost effective and spatially efficient, but also helped to create greater privacy in bathrooms. Victorian modesty and anxiety over bodily functions went so far that to even be seen entering a water closet could be cause for embarrassment (Kogan, 48). Architects strove to create private approaches to bathrooms in order to resolve this issue. One way to create a more private approach is to place bathrooms within already gendered spaces. Choosing to nest gendered spaces, architects created privacy gradients from public spaces to semi-private gendered spaces to the fully private water closet. As architect and theorist Jon T. Lang suggests, privacy gradients like these increase feelings of comfort and security by creating defensible spaces. Defensible spaces are spaces that an individual or group feels territorial control over (Lang, 151-152). In this case, the parlor, reading room, or emergency room become a defensible space. Female occupants can surveil who enters and what activities take place. An interloper could be expelled before reaching the much more private area of the water closet. It is not clear that Victorian architects understood or intended to activate these mechanisms. However, regardless of their intentions, the spaces they created exemplify privacy gradients and defensible space.

While initially both men and women had dedicated public spaces with water closets within them, things began to change as plumbing technology and infrastructure advanced. Starting in the 1860s, multi-user bathrooms became more common. While the gendered spaces that once contained them disappeared over time, bathrooms retained their gendered character. For women’s bathrooms only, a vestige of the gendered parlor was retained in the form of a bathroom lounge attached to women’s bathrooms. These lounges served as a space for women to rest and recuperate. Additionally, they maintained a deeper privacy gradient, acting as a buffer between the fully public space and the toilet stalls (Figure 4). As men were thought to be of greater fortitude than women, these lounges were not considered necessary. Over the course of the 20th century, women’s restroom lounges became a space for any gendered activity modest values dictated be hidden from view, like breast-feeding and applying makeup (Figure 5). (Yuko, par. 14, 18)

Figure 3. Photo and original caption of a women’s rest/emergency room containing water closets.

Figure 4. A multi-user women’s restroom and lounge in Detroit, circa 1900. Notice that the stalls are in the back corner, far from the entrance. The lounge is a semi-private buffer between the public and fully private spaces.

Figure 5. Military servicewomen apply makeup in a restroom lounge in New York during World War II.

Segmenting Gender Segregated Space

Gendered American Anxieties

The dominant culture in the United States perpetuates deep anxieties over the toilet. These anxieties are revealed in the language we use to talk about using the toilet. Euphemism is a linguistic tool that allows a speaker to refer indirectly to a culturally taboo, sensitive, or embarrassing subject. Using conventional euphemisms, speakers can make themselves understood while avoiding unpleasantness and maintaining decorum. The dozens of English euphemisms, from antiquity to modernity, for the toilet and the room that houses it are indicative of old and persistent anxieties surrounding it. (Stead, locations 1994-2001)

Many of these phrases, like ‘privy’, ‘(water) closet’, and the more humorous ‘private office’ focus on the need for privacy in the bathroom. Others obscure the dirty and shameful associations of the toilet by diverting focus to cleanliness and beauty. For example, ‘lavatory’ is derived from the Latin lavare ‘to wash’.  In fact, even the word ‘toilet’ is a euphemism belonging to this category. ‘Toilet’ comes from the French toilette, the diminutive form of toile, ‘cloth’. Toilette originally referred to the cloth draped around one’s shoulders during hair dressing or used to cover a dressing table. By association, it came to refer to the items kept on a dressing table used for dressing and grooming. Eventually the meaning migrated to describe the act of dressing, washing, and grooming and the room in which those activities take place. When plumbing fixtures were added to this room, the delicate toilette came to describe the indelicate fixture for human waste: the toilet (Stead, locations 2014, 2020-2027, 2040).

“Polite” society has a longstanding tradition of enforcing the use of euphemisms. Consistent with the Cult of Womanhood, this was especially the case in the presence of women, believed to possess a delicate modesty that could not withstand exposure to crudeness. Even the content of euphemisms is often gendered. While a woman on the way to use the toilet might say, “I’m going to powder my nose,” a man might use the much more suggestive, “I’m going to shake dew off my lily.” Using “powder my nose” as a euphemism for “use the toilet” completely obscures the real purpose of the trip and refers instead to an act of grooming and beautifying, circumventing any reference to indelicate and “unladylike” things. On the other hand, “shake the dew of my lily,” while veiled, is a direct reference to the act of urinating by a male. It is meant to be understood and even to conjure an image in the listener’s mind. These examples indicate a cultural tendency to instill greater toilet-related shame in women than in men. (Stead, locations 2000-2006, 2060)

It is telling that even the word for the fixture men use to urinate in public restrooms is less euphemistic than that for the fixture women use. While ‘toilet’ was borrowed from French already neatly packaged as a euphemism, urinal is quite literal. Its roots are in the Latin urina, which carried the same meaning as the English ‘urine’ today (Online Etymology Dictionary). It would appear that urinals are considered less shameful than toilets. The question is, why?

Partitions and Fixtures

In addition to linguistic tools like euphemism, architectural tools like stall partitions reveal greater cultural shame and embarrassment around toilets than urinals. According to Ruth Barcan, a culture deems “dirty” anything that it feels must be disposed of, hidden, or cleansed to maintain cultural order. Therefore, employing stall partitions to hide toilet use, but not urinal use, could indicate that toilet use is outside the established order, but urinal use is not. As urinals are typically only available to men, this suggests that the order partitions maintain is the gender order. For the modest and virtuous woman, any activity involving bodily excrement is indecent and must be hidden away. For men, urination is permitted to occur in the open. (Barcan, 25).

This is quite a tidy explanation, but it leaves unanswered questions that require more nuance. If men are less sensitive to indecency, why use partitions at all? Why is urinating the exception to the rule of stall partitions? For the answer, we must turn to plumbing fixtures and the ways in which they’re used. To use a toilet, one must assume a seated position and fully uncover oneself from the waist down. This is a considerably more vulnerable and embarrassing position than the upright and mostly clothed position assumed for urinal use. Of young girls, Simone de Beauvoir wrote in The Second Sex “To urinate, she is required to crouch, uncover herself, and therefore hide: a shameful and inconvenient procedure” (Beauvoir, 301-4). Of course, this posture is a reality of toilet use for women and men alike when it comes to eliminating solid waste, making stall partitions around toilets preferable both. It is likely that urinals do not require stall partitions partly as a result of the greater confidence and control inherent in an upright, less exposed stance.

It is worth pointing out yet another explanation for the lack of partitions around urinals. In his essay on men’s bathrooms, Lee Edelman suggests that urinals lack partitions not simply because they’re unnecessary. According to his analysis, the lack of partitions actually serves a purpose. Their absence, somewhat paradoxically, functions as a way to enforce heterosexuality. Partitions, were they to exist, would suggest that there’s something to hide or that someone might seek to find it. The lack of stall partitions denies the possibility of heterosexual desire between men. With stall divisions absent, men feel pressure to surreptitiously police their own gaze and the gazes of others, denying homosexuality even as they enforce it. (Edelman, 153-154, 161).

 

Masculine gender roles aside, it seems the main answer to the question of why women’s restrooms are more committed to stall partitions than men is ultimately because women are not provided with a means of urinating while standing up. Historically, there have been many objects, what I like to call ‘props’, for female upright urination, but no plumbing fixtures. In the 18th and 19th centuries, women used portable urinals and bourdaloues (Figure 6). Each was like a small, handheld chamber pot. Bourdaloues had a bowl like shape with a handle, while portable urinals were bottle-like, making them convenient for travel. Though convenient for the women of the era, they would not suit the needs of modern women. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the crotchless pantaloons women wore under their skirts made it possible to use portable urinals and bourdaloues without much hassle. A more recent foray into urinary props for women is the P-mate. It is a disposable, funnel shaped object that allows women to aim the stream of urine, rather than collecting it like bourdaloues and portable urinals. Though more sanitary than its predecessors, it is more of a stopgap than a true solution. (Penner, locations 2180-2183)

Fixtures for convenient female urination are few and far between and were never widely adopted. The urinettes of 19th century pay-per-use London public bathrooms were cheaper to use than water closets and were self-flushing like urinals, but still required assuming a squatting or sitting position. Though they used curtains rather than stall partitions, this choice was not because less privacy was necessary. Rather, it simply made them cheaper to construct. Similarly, modern attempts at female urinal design have failed to address the problems of posture and exposure inherent in toilet-use (Figure 7). These urinals still require women to undress from the waist down but are used in a squatting position without the protection of stall partitions. If anything, these arrangements would make them more inconvenient and much less comfortable than toilets stalls, and certainly more embarrassing. (Penner, locations 2200-2211, 2251-2257)

There is at least one example of a system for female urination that does not require full exposure of the lower body. However, it does require an overhaul of the women’s fashion industry. In the early 1990s, J. Yolande Daniels designed the FEMMETM pissoire (Figure 8). Along with her design for the fixture itself, she proposed a change to women’s pants design. Her P-system pants include a zipper low in the crotch so that users of the FEMMETM pissoire need only unzip to use it. (Penner, locations 2251-2262)

In general, female urinal designs have not been taken seriously. When actually installed, it’s usually just for the sake of novelty (Penner, location 2273). Our cultural failure to design an adequate female urinal suggests a commitment to female toilet use, with its many partitions. As we continue use of disparate fixtures and partitions in men’s and women’s bathrooms, we perpetuate Victorian values of modest and discreet femininity, tough and heterosexual masculinity, and the anxieties that go along with them. Though our anxieties around bathrooms is a cultural construct, that doesn’t make them any less distressing (Davis, 94). With that in mind, it’s important to make bathrooms comfortable for everyone and to ease those anxieties where we can, especially as gender neutral bathrooms become more common.

Figure 6. A porcelain bourdaloue from Oise, France, circa 1745.

Figure 7. Peescapes by Alex Schweder. Side by side male and female urinals, both modified to create aesthetic urine streams. Photographed by Alex Schweder, 2001.

Figure 8. FEMMETM pissoire, designed and photographed by J. Yolande Daniels.

Breaking Gender Barriers

In recent decades, the number of women’s bathroom lounges have dwindled as traditionally private, female activities like breast-feeding and diaper-changing move into gender-neutral family bathrooms. This change is an acknowledgement of evolving gender roles, as men take increased responsibility for childcare (Yuko, par. 27). Family bathrooms are essentially single user, but multi-user gender-neutral bathrooms have become much more common in recent years as well. Modern gender-neutral, multi-user bathrooms do away with gendered space and gendered differences in partitions and fixtures. They do not include urinals. Rather, they provide only toilets with European-style floor-to-ceiling partitions and a line of sinks (Sanders & Stryker, 783). While traditional gender-segregated bathrooms reinforce male/female gender roles and force users to choose which role to play, gender neutral bathrooms acknowledge that there are more than two choices and no set roles (Schweder, location 2751).

Though gender neutral bathrooms mark a huge shift in public bathroom design, some designers believe there is more to be done. Joel Sanders and Susan Stryker advocate for an entirely new approach to public bathrooms. Their proposed design uses a more open plan with deep privacy gradients, much like those of earlier women’s bathrooms, to increase safety and inclusivity (Figure 9). They created zones for coiffing, hand washing, and using the toilet. Multiple lines of mirrors allow for coiffing in the open or in semi-privacy. Additionally, the floor-to-ceiling stalls also include a mirror for anyone who requires complete privacy for coiffing. They even include a waiting area with a couch, reminiscent of the furniture in women’s bathroom lounges. But unlike women’s bathrooms, or indeed any bathrooms built in the United States before, their proposed design is a well-defined but open space. Rather than divide the bathroom from the space it serves with a wall and door, their design relies on their multi-layered privacy gradient to create sufficient privacy for each zone. In this way, they take the comfort and security of the women’s restroom lounges a step further, allowing for networks of behavior surveillance from both the inside and outside the bathroom.

Figure 9. A gender-neutral bathroom design by Joel Sanders and Susan Stryker.

Conclusion

Since the advent of indoor plumbing in the United States, bathrooms have reflected cultural anxieties and gender norms. For over 150 years, we segregated men and women into separate bathrooms and afforded them unequal levels of bodily privacy and convenience once inside to maintain the gender order. As we overhaul our ideas about gender and move toward gender-neutral spaces, we open up interesting design challenges and possibilities.

Bibliography

Barcan, Ruth. “Sex Separation: Dirty Spaces: Separation, Concealment, and Shame in the Public Toilet.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, pp. 25-41.

Beauvoir, S. de. The Second Sex. Ed. and trans. by H.M. Parshley. Knopf, 1949/1997.

Davis, Alexander K. Bathroom Battlegrounds: How Public Restrooms Shape the Gender Order. University of California Press, 2020.

Edelman, Lee. “Men’s Room.” Stud: Architectures of Masculinity, edited by Joel Sanders, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

Kogan, Terry S. “Sex-Separation in Public Restrooms: Law, Architecture, and Gender.” Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1-58. HeinOnline, https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/mjgl14&i=61. Accessed 19 February 2021.

Lang, Jon T. Creating Architectural Theory: The Role of the Behavioral Sciences in Environmental Design. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987.

Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, etymonline.com. Accessed 20 February 2021.

Penner, Barbara. “(Re)Designing the “Unmentionable”: Female Toilets in the Twentieth Century.” Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, edited by Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Kindle ed., Temple University Press, 2009.

Sanders, Joel and Susan Stryker. “Stalled: Gender-Neutral Public Bathrooms.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 115, no. 4, 2016, pp. 779–788. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3656191. Accessed 19 February 2021.

Schweder, Alex. “Stalls between Walls: Segregated Sexed Spaces.” Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, edited by Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Kindle ed., Temple University Press, 2009.

Stead, Naomi. “On Some Euphemisms for the ‘Smallest Room.’” Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, edited by Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Kindle ed., Temple University Press, 2009.

Yuko, Elizabeth. “The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge.” Bloomberg CityLab, Bloomberg L.P., 3 Dec. 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021.

Image sources

Figure 1:

Nast, Thomas. Ladies’ parlor at Willard’s Hotel, Washington. 6 March 1861. Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 2:

Nast, Thomas. Gentlemen’s parlor, reading and sitting room at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, during the Inauguration week. 28 Feb. 1861. Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 3:

“Rest Room in Paint Factory” The Conversation. The Conversation US, Inc, 26 May 2016. https://theconversation.com/how-did-public-bathrooms-get-to-be-separated-by-sex-in-the-first-place-59575. Accessed February 2021.

Figure 4:

A women’s restroom with a couch and writing table at the E.M. Bigsby showroom in Detroit, circa 1900, Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 5:

Wands, Bob. American servicewomen chat and apply makeup in the powder room of a women’s military-services club in New York during World War II. n.d. Associated Press. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

Figure 6:

Bourdaloue (women’s chamber pot). Circa 1745. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, https://collection.maas.museum/object/196062. Accessed 21 February 2021.

Figure 7:

Schweder, Alex. Peescapes, overview, 2001. “Stalls between Walls: Segregated Sexed Spaces.” Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, edited by Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Kindle ed., Temple University Press, 2009.

Figure 8

Daniels, J. Yolande. “FEMME pissoire.” Chateau Marmont. Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, edited by Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Kindle ed., Temple University Press, 2009.

Figure 9

Sanders, Joel and Susan Stryker. “Stalled: Gender-Neutral Public Bathrooms.” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 115, no. 4, 2016, pp. 779–788. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-3656191. Accessed 19 February 2021.

Divided We Sit: How bathrooms are a metaphor for societal standards and discrimination

Mar 8, 2021 | final paper, Graduate, Research | 0 comments

 

Divided We Sit

How bathrooms are a metaphor for societal standards and discrimination

By Savannah Sinowitz

Architecture is a symbol for a society’s values and ideas at a point in time, and in that essence, bathrooms are the most direct physical representation of a cultural phenomenon within all architectural typologies. Being that the toilet room is unique in its function and the way in which we interact with one another in the space, restrooms act as a magnifying glass into the values of a culture. In anthropology, one might say that the existing roman baths are a look into the lives of the romans. Similarly, we could argue that the same truths lay evident in the architecture found in our bathrooms throughout modern times. With this understanding, through the lens of the bathroom, we are able to dissect the cultural hierarchy that leads to discriminatory values against particular groups. How has bathroom architecture been used to create divisions among us and let society deem our place in the world? What measures have designers taken to secretly push social agendas on users, knowingly or otherwise? This research will address what architectural elements have promoted discrimination in various forms from 1837-2016 in America. With that information, we will be able to clearly access what discrimination tactics are still in use today.

As we start to identify periods of time that allowed for outright discrimination against minority groups, likely the most prominent and well-known would be the Jim Crow era of the late 19thand early 20thcentury. Discrimination was so blatant in the civil right crisis of the early 1900’s that it became the paradigm of segregation, specifically in bathrooms. During this era, it was mandated that based on skin color, public facilities would need to be “separate but equal.” It is a well-accepted fact that the bathrooms provided were in no way equal, but they certainly were separate. Before we examine the architecture behind the discrimination, first we must question the causality. Inherently, making the restrooms separate was just one more way to explain what society had made clear everywhere else: the races were not seen as equal in the social setting.  Therefore, those values were to be represented everywhere: using the bathroom as an archetype of the societal stance on race. In “Restroom Restrictions: How race and sexuality have affected bathroom legislation,” Tynseli Spence-Mitchell explains: “On the surface level, African American women and white women were prohibited from using the restroom together because of what it would represent: their integration starkly symbolized social equality” (Spence-Mitchell). Spence-Mitchell asserts that most people assume when discussing racially segregated restrooms that there was a white men’s, white women’s, ‘colored’ men, and ‘colored’ women’s restroom. That assumption is incorrect. It was actually far more common to have just one unisex ‘colored’ restroom, while white users were offered privacy in the form of gendered separation. This emphasizes the western value of privacy in restrooms, which was only allotted to the white users. By not giving the African American users the same level of privacy, the design was deliberately attempting to make the users feel “othered”. An example of a restroom that would be commonplace in the given time period is shown in the image below. The architecture was screaming out to the occupants that there were two socially accepted groups, white males and females, while people of color were made to feel non-human. In this setting, separation was added in, as well as taken away, and sends the message that people of color were not welcome.

Image I: Black and white image above depicts three doors: “ladies” “men” and “colored.”

Racial Discrimination

We would like to assume that the blatant bathroom barriers presented for people of color in the 20thcentury have been lifted, but is that truly the case? Can we assume that the architecture present in public bathrooms today promotes equality among races? In order to understand the accessibility of public restrooms based on outward appearance alone, we shall choose a bathroom archetype for comparison of basic scenarios. Suppose we were to select a public setting that is commonplace, known to have available restrooms and would be found in diverse areas, such as a Starbucks. As the primary example of coffeehouses in America and all that we represent, we should be able to examine the Starbucks restroom structure as an example for many other settings that offer small restrooms to the public.

Image II: Three women holding signs protesting against Starbucks following their refusal to allow a black man to use their restroom and later called police

 Barbara Penner, in “The Inclusive Bathroom” states that “an inclusive bathroom is a space that does not exclude particular groups either by design or by law: rather, it positively promotes mobility and well-being.” If we are to use Starbucks as the model for accessible public restrooms, then by no means could we say that these bathrooms are inclusive. In the 2018 article, “America’s problems with race start and end at your Starbucks bathroom,” published by the Chicago Tribune, the author details an experience that two African-American men had at a Philadelphia Starbucks. “Before police officers escorted the two black men out of the Philadelphia Starbucks in handcuffs, at least one of them had asked to use the restroom. The manager said no, reportedly because the men had not ordered anything. And if they stayed without at least a cup on their table, it was considered trespassing.” As an international coffee chain, Starbucks says that they have no policy regarding restrictive use of the bathrooms to paying customers. Rather, it was up to the discretion of the staff.

It is not unreasonable to question whether or not bathroom access would have been granted, or at the very least, police would not have been called if the requesting patron was Caucasian. The article later goes on to explain another case of bathroom discrimination at a Los Angles Starbucks in which a white customer was granted door code access to the restroom while an African-American man was denied. There is even a video recording of the white man acknowledging that he was not required to make a purchase prior to using the restroom while the other man was. This incident caused public outrage and added fuel to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement shown in the image above. By placing a human monitor near the restroom who at their discretion permits access, the design is allowing for discrimination to occur. The monitor acts as an architectural element that has been placed within eyesight of the bathroom and adds the opportunity for human discrimination. If bathroom access was something that business felt did not need to be monitored by a staff member, then what group would be inherently able to access the restrooms that the company would not favor? This question brings us to our next example of separation: discrimination against the unhoused.

Image III: Assemblywoman March Fong Eu destroys toilet with a sledgehammer as a part of a protest against pay toilets in front of the California State Capitol in 1969.

 

Discriminating against the unhoused

 

Throughout the 19thand 20thcentury in the United States, access to public bathrooms was limited. However, as time went on and sanitation progressed, restroom availability improved for the majority of society. Presently, there is only one group of people who face active measures to prevent access to bathrooms on a national scale: the homeless. At the forefront of these exclusive practices we have created is the architecture that has been designed to discriminate, and remnants of these architectural elements are still commonplace today.

 

In “It is a Privilege to Pee: The Rise and Demise of the Pay Toilet in America” by Katie Richards, the history of the downfall of the ‘pay-toilet’ is outlined in detail. The author explains that the notion of public restrooms emerged in America at the Chicago World Fair in 1983, where bathrooms became available at a price. As early on as the late 19thcentury, there was voiced annoyance at having to pay for something as involuntary as having to use the restroom. By the 1940’s, organized groups formed to advocate against pay toilets on the basis of discrimination and sanitary standards, one of which was the Committee to End Pay Toilets in America (CEPTIA). In the 1970’s, Los Angeles banned pay restrooms in public buildings, and many other cities followed suit thereafter. (Richards). One might say that this was the end of bathroom discrimination against those who cannot pay a fee, but that notion is incorrect. Alternatively, one might argue that every public restroom in America today is still a pay-toilet, because the architecture that supports public restrooms is actively discriminating against homeless people: the only group of people who very typically cannot pay for service or product. Essentially, the only group of people that could be deemed unfit through visual analysis alone would be a homeless person. Placement of the restroom in itself is discriminatory if the sole purpose is to give staff the opportunity to decide who is allowed to 

use it based on whether or not their physical appearance indicates their monetary status. If the patron does not seem to have enough money to be buying the product or service, they would be denied entry simply on the basis of social standing. In addition to the staff that act as bathroom monitors, there are even more architectural elements to support this theory. Another element that ensures patron-staff interaction to be granted access is the implementation of the bathroom door codeor customer key. Unless the patron themselves approaches the staff member to inquire about bathroom access, they are unable to enter. This is all but ensuring the patron passes a visual check to make sure they are not a person struggling with homeless, and thus someone of low social status. These tactics are only put in place to discourage use by a particular group, and the only group that would struggle with paying a fee would be a person in extreme poverty. It is a universal truth that nothing could be considered more discriminatory than denying access to a public space built on physical appearance alone, and yet that is exactly what we have designed our bathrooms to do. In this instance, we can assert with certainty that the current measures to secure public bathroom access only for customers that pass a visual analysis is discriminatory.

 

Transgender Discrimination

We have learned that architecture has the ability to support discriminatory practices, but physical elements have their limits. Just as the Jim Crow era bathroom crisis was only able to occur due to the laws that give it its infamous name, the same practice emerged once again in the 21stcentury. The ability to mandate by law who is not permitted to access a public restroom inherently turns restrooms into a weapon to be used against a particular community. In the early 1900’s, a white person would have deemed that a person of color would not be fit to inhabit their space. The white culture at that time promoted racism and accepted the idea that particular groups were considered less-than based solely on skin tone. As a modern society, we know that this was wrong, but at that time it was the norm. Eventually the laws that allowed segregation were abolished, and the majority of society was proud of the social awakening. However, we know that this was not the end of discrimination in America. Soon thereafter, LGBT+ targeted hate-acts skyrocketed. There was a genuine fear of contracting HIV/AIDS through public restrooms, and homosexual men became a primary target for bathroom hate crimes. In observing this trend, one particular group in today’s society is still being targeted in bathrooms: those identifying as transgender.

            

Discrimination against the transgender community is at an all-time high, and in some states, the governing bodies themselves are the ones doing the discriminating. The first state to enact a “bathroom bill,” a piece of legislation that denies access to the particular restroom that corresponds with their gender, was NorthCarolina in 2016. (Brian S. Barnett, MD, et al). Prior to the bathroom bill that passed in North Carolina, a similar bill came inches away from passing in South Dakota but was vetoed by Governor Dennis Daugaard following the passing of the bill by the legislature. (A.D.L.) Since then, many more restrictive bathroom bills have been proposed and enacted in states primarily throughout the southern U.S. These laws are directed towards restrooms in public spaces, and specifically target schoolchildren.

Image IV: Students protest a proposed bathroom bill in their state that would alienate transgender students

Denying schoolchildren access to the bathroom that best matches their identity is deeply harmful. Even the states that seek to provide a specific alternative space for transgender students creates inequality by making those particular students feel ‘othered’. The Anti-Defamation League explains in their article, “The Most Basic of Rights” how creating separation affects students: “When it comes to transgender and gender non-conforming students, these bathroom policies do the polar opposite and put these students at increased risk of attack, abuse and bullying. Thomas Lewis, a transgender high school student in South Dakota, says that the bathroom law “creates more stigma” and conveys this message to students: “You’re so different, in a bad way, that you need your own bathroom, your own locker room, your own shower situation.” It is impossible not to compare this act of “othering” to the plight of people of color during the Jim Crow era. Once again, there is a bathroom for binary females, binary males, and the group deemed as “other.” How can we claim that this is any different from denying bathroom access to someone based on the color of their skin? This is further evidence that the architectural elements that support discrimination are only acting as a mirror into societies beliefs during a specific time period.

 

 

Disparities Between Genders

Thus far, we have examined three groups that have faced discrimination based on perceived social status at that time. African Americans during the Jim Crow era, unhoused individuals and the transgender community throughout modern history have been faced with architectural elements that were put in place to either discourage usage in the same proximity as an accepted group, or simply deny access altogether. As we continue to examine discriminatory tactics used in toilet room architecture, we will shift gears from blatant exclusion, and fixate now on the emergence of much subtler discrimination: the disparities between men’s and women’s restrooms. We have discussed who is allowed entrance to the restroom thoroughly, but we now must confront what we might find once we are inside. What do the different interiors, fixtures and furniture say about us as a society, what we value and the reinforcement of gender roles?

 

In a given public area, we are likely to find two different restrooms: one for men and one for women. If men and women are considered equal, then would one say that our bathrooms are equal? In an effort to understand whether or not society truly sees the two genders as level, we first need to understand the history of gendered bathrooms. The public bathroom was an idea first introduced in the mid 1800’s following the World Fair in 1983.The advancement of technology such as the sewage system and flush toilet allowed for the expansion of the toilet into public life. However, these toilets were not designated for just any member of the public:most commonly, they were strictly for men.

Gail Ramster, et. al, explain in their article, “How inclusion can exclude: the case of public toilet provision for women” that women did not have the ability to relief themselves outside of the home in the same way that men could. “There were many urinals dotted around the city, as well as the provision in public houses, traditionally a rest stop with general access to toilets – but only for men. Thus the Victorian city, by offering single-gendered toilet provision would become a gendered space.” (Ramster, et al). The authors go on to explain that the professionals who made these public planning decisions, architects, engineers and building owners, were never women. Being that women during this time period were not involved in the working sphere, they were not discussed and their needs were not considered. 

 

Image V: Women are gathered in the parlor of a women’s restroom in the early 1900’s.

 

The lack of availability of fixtures inside of the restroom can likely be attributed to the societal notion that women were caretakers of the home, and thus should not be involved with the dealings of the public arena. Further evidence of this theory is seen in the interior design of restrooms during this time period which is best explained in Elizabeth Yuko’s journal: “The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge”. She explains, “when middle-class women did venture into public for extended periods it was thought that they required a private, safe, gender-segregated space of their own that looked and functioned like part of their home.

There is one fixture in every public bathroom setting required by the architectural code that inherently enforces gender roles. Furthermore, it is with this discovery that one could argue that the bathrooms presently found across the United States are deeply supporting the belief that women are still not equal to men. Oddly enough, this rather bold statement doesn’t come from some architectural element in the women’s restroom that is prohibiting equal access to the civic realm, but rather, it is what is missing from the men’s rooms: changing stations. 

Women began to speak out against the lack of restroom availability, the number of facilities available increased. As time went on and more female facilities were established, there were still great disparities in fixtures. In a given public restroom in the mid 1800’s, “male provision equated to twelve urinals and eight cubicles whereas the women’s toilets consisted of six cubicles ‘meaning the aggregate provision for men is over three times that of women” (Ramster, et al).

“They were designed like living rooms as space to protect virtue” (Yuko). Interestingly enough, these gendered parlors were actually commonplace in homes and other commercial areas, intended to protect the “virtue” of women, and thus was simply added as a toilet room feature once the public bathroom concept emerged. Women’s parlors found in public bathrooms still exist today. The large apparel retailer, Nordstrom’s, still famously utilizes a women’s parlor in their department restrooms. It should be noted that this is not the case for the men’s room and therefore it is distinct for a particular gender, and may not be reinforcing the value of equality that we often speak to in modern times.

 

 

 

 

In the early 20thcentury in London, there were many campaigns to add women’s restrooms to buildings in public settings. Once the movements started to gain some traction and restrooms were scarcely added, women had to either pay a small fee or purchase something from the establishment to be granted access to the facilities, even though men never had to pay to use the bathroom. Those who opposed the female bathroom rights movement at this time claimed that their opposition was due to the fact that women should not be involved in the public realm anyway, and that their place was at home with their children. Shockingly enough, even though most people would disagree with that sentiment today, our architecture still completely supports this outdated notion. While it is required to have a female restroom everywhere that there is a male restroom, by no means does the design of these restrooms support the idea that women are not the sole caretaker in a family. Men’s restrooms that have caring capabilities, specifically that of changing tables for young children and infants, are extremely rare. By not including this simple element in men’s restrooms, our architecture is saying that it is still the women’s place to care for children.

This is a prime example of inequality that can limit someone’s mobility overall. While there are hundreds of scenarios that support this narrative, one of the most difficult to grapple with would be the case of a widower raising a young child. If he needed to stop in the grocery store and change a diaper, where would he do it? Unfortunately, the only immediate solution in a situation such as that would be to put his child on a dirty bathroom floor and change him/her there. Since our society says that men are not primary care-takers and should not be concerned with such duties, he would not have access to the elements in a restroom that support a care-taker. In this instance, that man could easily say that the architecture is discriminating against him on the basis of sex. Furthermore, we are continuing to discriminate against women by assigning them an exclusive role that limits any other opportunities that they may have chosen for themselves outside of being a care-taker. Therefore, the lack of changing stations in men’s restrooms is discriminating against anyone who falls outside of the societal norm of gender roles. In conclusion, equality in restrooms as it relates to gender means much more than simply providing them. As designers, we need to be aware of what is a social norm that may be as outdated as assuming that a woman should stay home with her kids. Men and women (and those who identify as neither) are equally able to be care-takers and assume roles that are not designated based on gender, and our architecture needs to be reflective of these modern values that we claim to have.

 

 

Conclusion

We are living in a time in America in which we pride ourselves on striving for equality. Women are fighting to be paid the same as men, a conversation about racial equality took center stage this part year, and non-heterosexual or fluid sexual orientations are widely accepted. However, it is important to remember that while we feel that we are living in the modern era of social revolution and equality, we must confront the notion that every era was once the modern era. Every society felt that they were the ones taking strong stances for change, but looking back, every decade had at least one group that was discriminated against, and ours is no different.

As stated earlier, architecture is a symbol for a society’s values and ideas at a point in time, and in that essence, bathrooms are the most direct physical representation of a cultural phenomenon within all architectural typologies. With this in mind, we can confidently say that through the lens of the water closet, our society is in no way equal. We have active measures in place that support discrimination to various minorities, communities and genders. However, identification is the first step in reform. By being able to identify the inequalities that our country is unknowingly perpetuating, we will be able to address them and make change. As designers, we are forced to be at the forefront of revolutionary design that communicates the values that our culture claims to have, and it all starts with the bathroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

“Bodily Privacy, Toilets and Sex Discrimination.” Ladies and Gents Public Toilets and Gender, by Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner, Temple University Press, 2009. https://books.google.com/books?id=VN5kFuQQ7lsC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Cavanagh, Sheila L. Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination.         Toronto;Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 2010. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Pyg0UD3eaEoC&oi=fnd&pg=PT2&dq=queering+bathrooms&ots=EQT0            WVn5U5&sig=9iflGHMlAvvXoaeXt2lI1VTgdLs#v=onepage&q=queering%20bathrooms&f=false

Glanton, Dahleen. “America’s Problems with Race Start (but Don’t End) at Your Starbucks                         Bathroom.” Chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, 20 May 2019,           www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-met-dahleen-glanton-toilets-discrimination-20180418-story.html. 

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Health and Medicine Division;Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Policy and Global Affairs;    Science and Technology for Sustainability Program; Committee on an Evaluation of Permanent Supportive Housing Programs for Homeless Individuals. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2018 Jul 11.      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519584/ 

Penner, Barbara. “The Inclusive Bathroom.” Bathroom, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2014. Pg.199-   238.ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/reader.action?docID=1707062

Ramster, Gail, Greed, Clara, and Bichard, Jo-Anne. “How Inclusion Can Exclude: The Case of Public Toilet Provision for Women.” Built Environment (London. 1978) 44.1 (2018): 52-76. Web.

Richards, Katie. “It is a Privilege to Pee”: The Rise and Demise of the Pay Toilet in America.” 2018. The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol.47 : Iss. 1 , Article 3.https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol47/iss1/3

Spence‐Mitchell, Tynslei. “Restroom Restrictions: How Race and Sexuality Have Affected Bathroom Legislation.” Gender, Work & Organization, 4 Sept. 2020, doi:10.1111/gwao.12545.

“The Most Basic of Rights: Transgender Students Are Entitled To Respect And Dignity”. Anti-      Defamation League, 2016, https://www.adl.org/blog/the-most-basic-of-rights-transgender-students-are-entitled-to-respect-and-dignity.

Wen, Melissa. “Unhoused People’s Right To Public Bathrooms.” Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, harvardcrcl.org/shortage-of-public-bathrooms-creates-  unacceptable-risks-for-unhoused-people/. 

Yuko, Elizabeth. “The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge.” Bloomberg CityLab, Bloomberg L.P., 3 Dec. 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-  restroom-lounge. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021. 

 

Image Sources:

Image I: https://www.stalled.online/historicalcontext-navigation

Image II: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/04/16/black-man-videotapes-starbucks-: refusal-let-him-use-restroom/521233002/

Image III: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/why-the-u-s-should-give-pay-toilets-another-chance 

Image IV: https://theconversation.com/the-transgender-bathroom-controversy-four-essential-reads-72635 

Image V: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge 

Image VI: https://www.today.com/parents/potty-parity-dads-fight-diaper-changing-tables-mens-rooms-2D79759305

Fountain’s Queer History

Feb 28, 2021 | Graduate, Reflection | 0 comments

Fountain’s Queer History

Marcel Duchamp not only challenged the art world in 1917 with his “readymade” urinal entitled Fountain, he intended to confront society’s feelings about homosexuality. By signing the inverted urinal with a pseudonym R. Mutt and submitting it to the newly established Society of Independent Artists, he attempted to subvert the standards of aesthetics by undermining the idea that art was sacred, while also shedding light on the homosexual sub-culture of the era. “While the interwoven histories of pissoirs and male-male public sex may not have been part of Duchamp’s life story,” they are components of Fountain (Franklin 23). Although most writing and reflection about Fountain pertains to critics dismissing it as a vulgar joke or a clever appropriation of an object that was not actually a work of art, they were missing Duchamp’s true intention of the piece. This writing intends to point out that Marcel Duchamp was actually intending to acknowledge the 1917 gay community thriving in public men’s rooms throughout Paris, New York and beyond.

Duchamp was on the board of the Society of Independent Artists, but they were unaware Fountain was his submission and overrode their own rule of ‘no jury’ to exclude the urinal from the show. Proclaiming the dismissal was based on the grounds that it was obscene and “may be a very useful object in its place…it is by no definition, a work of art” (Franklin 32). Duchamp resigned from the board in protest, but may have believed that the true reason Fountain was rejected remained unsaid.

Fountain brought to light the gay sub-culture of public urinals, which was a topic the civilized art community didn’t want to address, explore or promote, so they covered up their true denial by changing the subject. They made the issue about the definition of art instead. Duchamp may have believed that the group wanted to avoid addressing the homosexual connotations that the urinal revealed. His choice of a urinal as his “readymade” echoed a kind of fetish symbol for homosexual encounters. Considering this makes one believe that the protests by the Society were basically because they didn’t want to open a Pandora’s Box and acknowledge the sub-culture of the gay community. Gallery owners may have feared exposure of homosexual activity within their ranks if they didn’t condemn Fountain at the onset.

During the ninetieth and early twentieth centuries in New York, Paris and other cities, public urinals or pissoirs, were cultural concerns on several levels. City planners and health officials voiced concerns of placement and public health, but the underlying threat that worried them most was male homosexuality (Franklin 23). Officials and social reformers were convinced that “male homosexuals…were attracted to public toilets just as moths were to street lights” (Franklin23). This turn of the century blessing of sanitation had morphed into a queer playground for the homosexual community, which had not been so visible on the streets before. There was already a New York and Paris sub-culture of gay pornography that depicted men engaging in sexual acts in pissoirs and men’s rooms (Franklin 29). It was as if this artwork was advertising the fact that this is where to go for gay sex.

The cultural taboos of the era were on high alert when Duchamp introduced Fountain, in 1917; luckily Alfred Stieglitz photographed it before it was lost to history. Since then, Duchamp was commissioned in the 1950s to make several replicas of his famous urinal, which are on display at the finest museums in the world (Cromwell 2). In 2004 Duchamp’s Fountain received the honor as being “the most influential artwork of the 20th century” (Cromwell 2).

Through the decades that followed, Duchamp’s Fountain has conceived many generations of urinal art, also sparking controversy, although today’s gay culture is out in the open and culturally accepted. Dutch artists Elmgreen and Dragset have made their mark in art history following Duchamp. They prepare architectural structures that often subvert and transform their functions, offering humor between proximity and promiscuity (Vestner 2). Their sculptural installation, “Gay Marriage” 2010 is a direct homage to Duchamp. It is a pair of men’s room urinals whose pipes intertwine below, declaring their intimate connection openly. The cultural reflection of the art of the urinal has transformed over the decades, but it is still a bell weather report on how a society rejects or accepts homosexuality.

Bibliography

Cromwell, Bob. “The Toilet Guru.” Toilets of the World, 22 Feb. 2021, toilet-guru.com/.

Franklin, Paul B. “Object Choice: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain and the Art of Queer Art History.” Oxford Art Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 2000, pp. 25–50.

Vestner, Elmar. “Gay Marriage: ELMGREEN & DRAGSET (2010).” PERROTIN, 1 Jan. 1970, www.perrotin.com/artists/Elmgreen_et_Dragset/32/gay-marriage/19066.

Marcel Duchamp “Fountain” 1917

It went missing soon after this image was made. Photo by Alfred Stieglitz, NYC

Pissoir, Paris, 1865-70

The phallic design is prominent. Photo by Charles Marville

Gay Marriage by Elmgreen and Dragset, 2010

The tangle of pipes create a physical union. Photo by Matthias Kolb

Toilet Bowl Reflections of Two Cultures

Feb 22, 2021 | Graduate, Reflection | 0 comments

Toilet Bowl Reflections of Two Cultures

No two cultures may have as much in common regarding consumerism as America and Japan, but their similarities stop at the bathroom door. Both societies embrace a 21st century addiction to consumerism and keeping up to date with the latest technology and design in the global marketplace, except when it comes to the toilet. The Japanese penchant for cleanliness and hi-tech wizardry in the bathroom has been parodied by comedians, amplifying the cultural attitudes towards anal hygiene. Americans on the other hand, have been spoofed for not even washing their hands. Bathroom habits reflect these two cultures in two different lights, making the Japanese appear to be a more civilized society.

Japan’s 2015 Toilet of the Year Award went to Klein Dytham Architecture for their installation at Narita Airport in Japan (Zach 574). Toto, the world’s largest toilet manufacturer, designed the public restrooms as an art gallery featuring their toilets and fixtures as works of art (Smith 1). The façade is a multicolored, low-resolution LED screen on translucent walls that feature soft silhouettes of virtual people using the toilet, dancing and elegantly sweeping through the space. Toto promotes using their facilities as an inspiring experience, which is reflected in the users and the observers alike (Frearson 1).

There is an artistic irony of the illusion that a person is on full display to every passerby, when actually it is quite private. The LED walls mimic the traditional translucent Japanese shoji screens that offer partial privacy. It’s a very interesting paradox that the privacy one expects when using a toilet is virtually on full display at Narita Airport. Most Americans anticipate a public restroom to be a  closed off environment with banks of static stalls that one hopes to be clean enough. Toto’s public restroom at Narita Airport is likely a surreal experience for most first-time travelers to Japan, not just because of the pseudo exhibitionist display, but also because of the toilets themselves.

Toto uses the public restroom to popularize their toilets, which respond to your voice commands, warm your bottom, vibrate, and most uniquely wash your bum and blow it dry. They create an environment of sounds and smells that negate the actual business at hand. Toto gallery educates travelers about the Japanese philosophy of bathroom hygiene, while promoting their state of the art Toto products. Toto wants to spread the Japanese culture of toilet hygiene to international visitors so the airport is the perfect location. Foreigners get a chance to experience the beauty of Toto’s products as soon as they arrive.

Americans are reluctant to change their bathroom habits even though “U.S. toilets are effectively bedpans with a drain” says Bill Strang, President of Toto USA ( Johnny 1). While Toto toilets offer soothing music, bidet washing, seat warming, dryers and deodorizing, the American Standard toilets only feature one option, the flush (Frearson 1).

The Japanese highly regard hygiene and cleanliness in all aspects of their culture. If one goes to a Japanese restaurant, even in the U.S., a hot towel is offered to cleanse hands before eating. Similarly, shoes are automatically removed before entering a home. Masks were customarily worn in public long before COVID-19.

The consumerist culture in Japan rivals the U.S. in that they spend more on consumer items than they reserve in savings (Zacharopoulou 575). The Japanese seem to focus on technology and innovation and are willing to pay for it, especially in bathrooms. Toto, after all is the largest bathroom manufacturer in the world, offering the highest priced porcelain on the planet.

So why are Americans so far behind the Japanese in their cultural bathroom expectations? Bathroom habits may seem to be a simple matter of normal hygiene, but they’re actually social conditioning of a culture. We are taught how to use the toilet. Potty training is a right of passage in America, when mom doesn’t have to wipe your bum for you. What may seem weird for the Japanese, like using tons of toilet paper and tossing it into the toilet, it is perfectly normal for Americans, who are most likely the number one consumers of toilet paper. Americans and Japanese are global consumers, but definitely spend their money differently when it comes to the bathroom.

 

Bibliography:

Frearson, Amy. “Japan’s ‘Toilet of the Year’ Seems to Offer No Privacy.” Dezeen, 31 Oct. 2015, www.dezeen.com/2015/10/29/klein-dytham-architecture-toilet-of-the-year-gallery-toto-narita-airport-tokyo-japan/.

Smith, Johnny. “Narita Airport’s New Toilet Gallery Is a Museum for Bathrooms.” Spoon & Tamago – Japanese Art, Design and Culture, 5 May 2017, www.spoon-tamago.com/2015/04/25/narita-airports-new-toilet-gallery-is-a-museum-for-bathrooms.

Zacharopoulou, Katerina. “Reclaiming The Throne.” ASAP Journal 5.3 (2020): 574-79. Web.

 

Toto Gallery 2015

Japanese toilet manufacturer TOTO has created an art gallery — within a public restroom — at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. Silhouettes of dancing toilet users promote the Japanese toilet culture of cleanliness. Photo: Toto Gallery

Toto Gallery 2015

The shoji style LED façade is illuminated with virtual figures using the facilities. Photo: Toto Gallery

Toto Gallery 2015

Inside the private room at Narita Airport showing the finest in Toto products. Photo: Toto Gallery 2015

Rest Area Hobbyist

Feb 22, 2021 | Graduate, Reflection | 0 comments

Are you wondering how I came up with this topic to research? It’s a long story, but not as long as some of the drives that influenced this idea.

My first cross country drive was when I moved to Oregon in the summer of 2018 to start my master’s of interior architecture degree here at the University of Oregon. Before this move, I had never been east of Tennessee, and my longest day driving was probably just over 12 hours.

Since moving to Oregon, I have driven cross country six times. I have come to love road trips and long-distance driving. A majority of these trips have been by myself – except one when my mom tagged along for the ride last summer on my way back to Oregon from North Carolina. I enjoy these drives because you get to see so many different landscapes and communities, all within a few hours or days. It’s truly amazing. I feel like I get a small glimpse of life in each city and state that I drive through.

Not until the latter part of my cross-country drives did I start to notice the unique architecture of each rest area I stopped at. Once I started seeing them, I couldn’t stop! My most recent cross-country drive was last November when I drove home for the holidays. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I felt that it would be safer driving than flying home for the holidays. As I started my three-day drive home, I quickly became enthralled with every rest area I drove past. Making this drive in three days was extremely ambitious and consisted of three 13+ hour days of driving. During this time, I took full advantage of every rest area I approached. These stops allowed me to safely take breaks whenever I felt fatigued and kept me interested in what was further down the interstate.

I am always snapping photos of objects and spaces that I find interesting. As I noticed the unique rest area features and materiality, I documented them with photos. If I had known that I would be researching this topic and writing about it, I would have taken a lot more photos! Here are a few photos I took of a few interesting rest area amenities that I thought were worth documenting. It’s incredible how the region’s locale is expressed through all aspects of the rest area. Of course, some express it better than others

The interior of this rest area is tiled with a mosaic of an oil pumpjack. Can you guess which state this rest area was in?

 

This one took me off guard. I stopped at a rest area in Utah in the middle of nowhere, it was considered one of those interstate oases, so it had a lot of parking and a large restroom facility. I was very interested in this outhouse because it seemed out of place a few feet away from modern restroom amenities. I’m very curious about its origin and purpose.

 

                                      .   

I stopped at this rest area in Wyoming just for fun and to explicitly check out its’ architecture. Like many rest areas, this stop had unique picnic structures. Even more fascinating was the passive solar design of this rest area. The diagram below shows how the passive solar design works for this particular site.

 

Image sources: Ashley Lowe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Toilets are Calling and I Must Go

Feb 10, 2021 | Graduate, public restroom, Reflection, Research, United States | 0 comments

In case you didn’t know we are on a road trip. We left a couple of weekends ago and are taking our sweet time, stopping for snack breaks, bathroom breaks, and stretch breaks at every rest area we approach. We’ve left Eugene and we are headed east towards Colorado. If you are wondering why we are on this adventure it’s because we are doing research for our Interior Architecture History II graduate paper assignment.

So, why Colorado you ask? Colorado is great and has so much to offer but I bet you can’t guess why and what we will be visiting? It seems to be the only topic our peers will research and discuss these days? Hmm, still not crossing your mind.

Okay, I’ll give you a hint – you use one every day.

Any Ideas?

Well, since we are almost there, I’ll fill you in on the details. We are headed to Colorado to visit Rocky Mountain National Park’s Long’s Peak toilets! These toilets were built in 2018 by the ColoradoBuildingWorkshop in collaboration with the National Parks Service. A little information about the site location; Long’s Peak is the tallest and most iconic mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park and has become one of the most frequented 14ers in the state of Colorado (ROMO Backcountry Privies | 2018 | Colorado Building Workshop). In 1983 the National Parks Service first installed backcountry toilets to deal with human waste on the trail to the summit. Over time and exposure to harsh climate conditions, the original toilets have deteriorated and are no longer successfully managing backcountry waste. ColoradoBuildingWorkshop worked with the National Parks Service to re-design and construct new backcountry toilets. The final design is made up of a series of prefabricated structural gabion walls that explore lightweight prefabricated construction. Within the gabions, a series of thin steel plate moment frames triangulate the lateral loads within the structure while stones collected from the area are used as ballast (ROMO Backcountry Privies | 2018 | Colorado Building Workshop). Students participating in ColoradoBuildingWorkship erected the structure in eight days, hiking three to six miles each day to the site. I find this structure to be very unique and quite beautiful. I love how the structure seemingly disappears into the surrounding landscape.

I bet you haven’t seen a better view from a toilet.

Blending in with its’ surroundings.

Since we are here admiring this award-winning structure – and probably waiting in line to use the toilet or catching your breath in this thin air – let me tell you a few facts about backcountry waste management. There are many different kinds of backcountry toilets and they are called by many different names. Outhouse, Pit Toilet, Privy, Composting Toilet, to name a few. These toilets also have different rules that apply to them in order for your waste to properly decompose. So always read the notes posted inside and be sure to follow the directions! For example, urine increases the stench in old-fashioned pit privies, so users are asked to pee in the woods and only use these privies for number two type business. More modern pit toilets often found at campgrounds or trailheads always remind you to put the toilet seat back down after you do your business. Lowering the seat helps manage the smell. Always use privies or pit toilets if they are available, they are the most sanitary option and help to prevent the pollution of camping areas and water sources (Poop Week: Real Talk on a Backcountry Basic — Washington Trails Association).

Let me know in the comments if you would prefer a driving or walking tour on our next weblog excursion. I’ll try not to include another 14er next time!

 

Bibliography:

Longs Peak Toilets – AIA. https://www.aia.org/showcases/6120798-longs-peak-toilets. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

Poop Week: Real Talk on a Backcountry Basic — Washington Trails Association. https://www.wta.org/news/signpost/poop-week-real-talk-on-a-backcountry-basic. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

ROMO Backcountry Privies | 2018 | Colorado Building Workshop. http://coloradobuildingworkshop.cudenvercap.org/portfolio-item/romo-backcountry-privies-2018/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

 

Image Sources:

ROMO Backcountry Privies | 2018 | Colorado Building Workshop. http://coloradobuildingworkshop.cudenvercap.org/portfolio-item/romo-backcountry-privies-2018/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

Poop Week: Real Talk on a Backcountry Basic — Washington Trails Association. https://www.wta.org/news/signpost/poop-week-real-talk-on-a-backcountry-basic. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

Social Norms in Restrooms are Changing

Feb 7, 2021 | Graduate, Reflection | 1 comment

Considering architecture is a reflection of a society’s values and social norms at a particular point in time, bathrooms offer a very specific insight into a culture, according to University of Oregon student, Savannah Sinowitz, in Divided We Sit:  America’s Long History of Inequality in Restrooms. Our contemporary culture boasts being tolerant and inclusive by supporting diversity and gender equality, but as much as we are taking strides forward, we may be falling short on that promise.

Unisex Restrooms: There has been a popular movement by architects to design Unisex restrooms. This is to keep up with the need to accommodate all members of society equally and especially to speed up service to women, who often have to wait much longer than men do to use the facilities. With Unisex bathrooms, women don’t have to sneak into the men’s room because they can’t hold it. Since these restrooms have been designed for a single user, they are large with ample room for people with special needs like wheelchairs and walkers, making them user friendly to a wider population. It’s such a simple shift in our public social norms, but think about your bathroom at home; it’s Unisex.

Helsinki, Finland Unisex Restroom Sign. Photo: Michael Edson

Family Restrooms: The development of the Family Restroom provides a private, clean and comfortable space for a family in a public setting. There is a sense of security, especially with young children in tow or if you have an elderly person to care for. Furthermore, there is often seating available for the nursing mother to comfortably breastfeed her baby in privacy. The family restroom caters to men in need of a diaper changing station for their children, which is pretty much non-existent in public men’s rooms. These developments in design function as a positive evolution in the public restroom and reflect our desire to cater the common good for all citizens.

Carnivalesque Men’s Rooms: On the contrary however, is a trend in men’s room design known as “carnivalesque” restrooms, which seemingly mock the values of a progressive society. These trendy, upscale bathrooms for men were designed to embrace the carnival spirit of radical humor, celebrating crude personal desire and a hunger for self-gratification at the most basic levels of satisfaction, like urination. The bizarre is on full display in these themed men’s rooms, which cater to the “irrational, inane, violent, sexual and vulgar” (Bernier-Cast 23). Some have two-way mirrors giving the user voyeuristic pleasure, others include mannequins bent over the urinals or virtual women photographing, measuring and being suggestive of sexual acts.

Virtual women mocking a man while he urinates. Photo: Tony Williams

One example is Kisses, which are urinals made in the Netherlands by Bathroom Mania and have been installed in upscale hotel and casino men’s rooms worldwide. Kisses are banks of urinals sculpted to look like gaping female mouths with huge glossy red lips. Men perversely urinate into the mouths of these working girls, which is a nod to the carnivalesque mentality. First response may be a laugh and a shake of the head, however, in 2010 a coalition of women’s groups successfully petitioned to have Kisses removed from a Canadian restaurant on the grounds that they promoted aggression, sadism and violence against women (Bernier-Cast 31). Carnivalesque men’s room designs appear to cater to an elite branch of the population, presumably with disregard to accepted social behavior.

Urinals entitled Kisses at a bar in Paris. Photo: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters

As a modern and civilized society, we can take pride in the strides architecture has taken so far to appreciate the needs of our citizens in regards to public restrooms. The introduction of unisex and family restrooms into the public sphere seem to follow the notion that architecture is a reflection of a society’s values and social norms at a particular point in time (Sinowitz). However, if bathrooms offer a very specific insight into a culture, what do carnivalesque men’s rooms say about our culture? Is there a hidden truth about human nature that is revealed? Are men rebelling against equality, since they have been so dominant throughout history? This passive violence and crude behavior in men’s rooms appears to be in direct opposition to the values of a civilized society. Because architecture is a reflection of a society’s values, this trend raises a red flag into the true character and attitudes of our culture. If we sincerely want to be a tolerant, humane and inclusive society, we need to question the role carnivalesque men’s rooms hold.

Bibliography:

Sinowitz, Savannah. “Divided We Sit: America’s Long History of Inequality in Restrooms.” Welcome to the Toilet, 1 Feb. 2021, blogs.uoregon.edu/wc75/2021/02/01/divided-we-sit-americas-long-history-of-inequality-in-restrooms/.

Bernier-Cast, Karen. “Gargoyles, Kisses and Clowns: A Study of Carnivalesque Male Urinals and Restrooms.” Material Culture, vol. 43, no. 1, 2011, pp. 21–39.

Digital Visualization and Description

Feb 1, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate | 4 comments

Shame and Perceived Fragility:

The Shaping of Privacy Gradients in Women’s Public Restrooms

The public restroom is a curious place, one that reveals the idiosyncrasies of our collective culture. In the modern United States, we take privacy and decency in public bathrooms very seriously. Perceived threats to the status quo, such as the creation of gender-neutral bathrooms, are often met with disproportionate outrage. And yet, enormous gaps between stall divisions and the floor go largely unquestioned, as does the complete lack of divisions between men’s urinals. Women’s restroom lounges, though disused, are still the norm in department stores like Nordstrom and Macy’s. Where (and when) did these privacy conventions come from, and why do they differ across bathrooms designated for men and women?

A look at Victorian era values can answer many of these questions. When public restrooms began appearing in large numbers around the mid-19th century, Victorian emphasis on decency, modesty, and privacy heavily influenced their design (Alessandra Wood in Yuko, par. 3). Even before restrooms made their debut in the public sphere, men and women were often segregated in public places to protect female virtue. Belief in women’s superior virtue to men predates the Victorian era. Believing in this idealized woman, the culture concluded that her logical place was in the domestic sphere where she could serve as steward of morality for the home and all those who dwelt within it (Kogan, 146). As industrialization restructured society in the first decades of the 19th century, Victorians were anxious to reassert these traditional values while still allowing for female consumers to participate in the increasingly capitalist economy (Kogan, 146). Victorian architects resolved this quandary by bringing the domestic sphere into the public. Dedicated female spaces in public places were implemented beginning in the 1820s (Kogan in Yuko, par. 9-10). Libraries, theaters, department stores, and other venues housed women’s lounges or parlors separate from those for men (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1. The ladies’ parlor at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. during the week of the 1861 presidential inauguration. Men were presumably allowed in for the special occasion (Yuko, par. 7)

Figure 2. The men’s parlor, reading, and sitting room at the Willard during the week of the 1861 inauguration.

In addition to being distant from men’s parlors, women’s parlors were decorated differently. Designers of the time thought it necessary to mimic domestic interiors in these spaces in order to help women feel comfortable and at home, thereby reinforcing women’s proper domestic role (Wood in Yuko, par. 5). During the first half of the 19th century, plumbing infrastructure allowed for only single-user public bathrooms, making sex-segregated bathrooms somewhat redundant. Nevertheless, it quickly became convention to place bathrooms inside women’s and men’s lounges, making them sex-segregated by default (Yuko, par. 12). As plumbing infrastructure grew in the 1860s, multi-user restrooms became common. Though architects did away with the men’s lounge at this point, they preserved the women’s lounge as an attachment to the larger bathrooms (Figure 3), believing women to be more fragile and to require a place to rest and recuperate (Yuko, par. 14).

Figure 3. A multi-user women’s restroom and lounge in Detroit circa 1900. Notice the writing table and couch.

Additionally, the restrictive garments women wore at the time required space to remove them hidden from the male gaze (Wood in Yuko, par. 3). Yet, as clothing styles changed, these women’s restroom lounges remained. They became spaces in which to hide the varied female activities that society deemed shameful or indecent. In the early 20th century, it became acceptable for women to wear makeup, but it was still improper to apply it in public spaces. Thus, women’s restroom lounges were adapted with vanities (Figure 4) so that women could apply makeup in semi-privacy (Yuko, par. 18).

Figure 4. Military servicewomen apply makeup in a restroom lounge in New York during World War II.

Today, women’s lounges are disappearing as many of the traditionally private female activities like breast-feeding and diaper changing move into gender-neutral “family rooms” (Yuko, par. 27). However, some relics of the Victorian era still persist in modern public restrooms. The advent of multi-user public restrooms marked another change besides the disappearance of men’s lounges. With several people using the space at once, it became necessary to establish privacy between users. For men, meant urinals for urination and stalls for defecation, while for women it meant stalls for both urination and defecation. Because stalls offer much more privacy than urinals, this design choice sends a message about which activities by whom require the most privacy (Barcan, 31). Female urination, defecation, and menstruation were deemed indecent by men, who hid them behind stall doors or didn’t provide public accommodations in which they could take place at all (Reed, 121). Concerns about male decency have apparently influenced women’s restroom stall designs as well. Preoccupation with discouraging sexual encounters between men in public restrooms led designers to add this gap so that stall occupancy could be policed; thoughtlessly, they applied this design to women’s stalls as well (Greed, 135).

Though definitions of what is proper are ever-changing, cultural values and stereotypes relating to privacy, decency, and gender roles have influenced public bathroom design from their beginnings to today.

Works Cited

Barcan, Ruth. “Sex Separation: Dirty Spaces: Separation, Concealment, and Shame in the Public Toilet.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 25-41.

Greed, Clara. “Creating a Nonsexist Restroom.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 117-141.

Kogan, Terry S. “Sex Separation: The Cure-All for Victorian Social Anxiety.” Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Harvey Molotoch and Laura Noren, New York University Press, 2010, 141-164.

Yuko, Elizabeth. “The Glamorous, Sexist History of the Women’s Restroom Lounge.” Bloomberg CityLab, Bloomberg L.P., 3 Dec. 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 23 Jan. 2021.

Image Sources

Figure 1

Nast, Thomas. Ladies’ parlor at Willard’s Hotel, Washington. 6 March 1861. Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

 

Figure 2

Nast, Thomas. Gentlemen’s parlor, reading and sitting room at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, during the Inauguration week. 28 Feb. 1861. Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

 

Figure 3

A women’s restroom with a couch and writing table at the E.M. Bigsby showroom in Detroit, circa 1900, Library of Congress. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

 

Figure 4

Wands, Bob. American servicewomen chat and apply makeup in the powder room of a women’s military-services club in New York during World War II. n.d. Associated Press. Bloomberg CityLab, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-12-03/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-women-s-restroom-lounge. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

 

Equal is not quite enough

Feb 1, 2021 | Description (G), Graduate, Research | 6 comments

The public toilet has become a common space in the built environment. Whether it is a luxurious retreat in a hip restaurant, or a dingy wet room outside of the gas station, many public toilets are separated into a women’s and a men’s room. This paper seeks to reveal the story of the public restroom in modern history and how it came to be separated by sex. The implications of this separation are attributed to the design of the public toilet room. The role of the architect may be considered significant in the social realm of the public toilet (Mokdad).

The modern toilet came to be in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in England after the Society of Arts began to emphasize the need of sewers in the London. They felt the need to keep up with the standard visitors had become accustomed to and wanted to create a feeling of comfort. London was rivaling Paris, which already had cabinets and public urinals. When pressuring the sewer company did not work, the facilities engineer for the Crystal Palace was put in charge of the integrated water closets. These water closets proved successful and remained well kept through the many visitors. The convivence of these public toilets was effective but did not remain in London. Accustomed to their private lifestyle of water closets, the community minded approach of public restrooms remained at bay for a few more years when the sewer system was built (Penner).

While the sewer system and the convenience of bathrooms grew, so did the disparities. The poorer parts of town often were overlooked or the fees to install the sewers were too much. Local governments opposed building public women’s bathrooms which ended up with less women rooms than men (Penner). In the midst of it all, London created the gendered spaces that are public toilets. This moment in time was largely due to the professions creating these spaces-architects and engineers-who were all males. The initial design of the toilet catered to the male body and little consideration was made for the female needs. Women were made to pay for their time at the public restroom, while men went for free. Not to mention, almost all of the designs of this time were inaccessible to any person with a special need. The humble beginnings of the public toilet came with the price of inequality and poor design for all people (Ramster).

In the midst of the design of public toilets that give some privacy, public urinals were still an active part of street life. Open, on street urinals, however, were only accessible to able bodied men. Women once again were left out and left behind in the history of public bathrooms. When studying toilet design, history tends to exclude women. Gender has played a major role in the design of toilets and the culture surrounding them. The standard stall size for men forgets the need to sit down, the need for toilet paper, the space for a sanitary disposal bin. The design of the public stall leaves no room for these necessities of those who menstruate. The lack of the public restrooms for women and the time spent waiting to use them, can run the risks of bleeding through clothing or experiencing toxic shock syndrome if they cannot change a product in time. In the diagrams shown, equal is still not enough. Public restrooms need to double for women in order to be equal to male counterparts. (Ramster).

Throughout modern history, the access to and the design of public restrooms has been inadequate for women.  The design decision to have modular stalls based off of the male body has not proven effective for the women who need public restrooms. Architects have continued to fall into the outdated patterns of 19th century public water closets without thinking twice about it. Although ADA compliance has forced the hand of accessible design, public restroom design has not adapted to fit the needs of women.


 

The history of public restroom design and its impact of gender.

Bibliography

Ramster, Gail, Greed, Clara, and Bichard, Jo-Anne. “How Inclusion Can Exclude: The Case of Public Toilet Provision for Women.” Built Environment (London. 1978) 44.1 (2018): 52-76. Web.

Penner, Barbara. Bathroom, Reaktion Books, Limited, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.uoregon.edu/lib/uoregon/detail.action?docID=1707062.

Mokdad, Allaa. “Public Toilets: The Implications in/for Architecture.” Michigan Academician, vol. 46, no. 1, 2019, p. 91. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A605249260/AONE?u=euge94201&sid=AONE&xid=a3e424a6. Accessed 31 Jan. 2021.

University of Oregon • School of Architecture and Environment • IARC 475/575 • History of Interior Architecture II • Winter 2021 • Solmaz Kive