Midterm Projects
Undergraduate Students
A
History
The Restroom
in the United States
Global Culture
Technology
Chapters from
Bathroom by Barbara Penner (2013).
Graduate Student Research
Public toilets and the plight of menstruating women
Figure 1. Girls and women menstruate - period.At any given time, fully one-quarter of the global population of adult women are menstruating (Schmitt et al.) (fig. 1) This is a significant number, a number that seemingly is not worthy of consideration in the realm of public toilet design. This paper will address public toilets and the unique needs of menstruating women through the lens of the Western world, primarily the UK and the US, exploring specifically the cultural and historical bias...
Digital Visualization and Description
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...
Equal is not quite enough
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...
Divided We Sit: America’s Long History of Inequality in Restrooms
Divided We Sit: America's Long History of Inequality in Restrooms How bathrooms are a metaphor for societal standards and social status Restrooms act as a magnifying glass into the values of a culture. In anthropology, one might say that as the existing roman baths are a look into the lives of the romans, and similarly we could argue that the same truths lay evident in the architecture found in our bathrooms today. Searching for prominent truths about the values of a culture also...
The Origin of the Road Side Toilet
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 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...
Carnivalesque Men’s Rooms
There is a sideshow trajectory in male restrooms and these carnivalesque urinals really hit the target. Urinals are rarely a topic of discussion or academic writing, but there is much to be revealed about human nature in this newest trend in men’s restrooms. Carnivalesque restrooms for men have become popular in Europe, UK, Australia, Japan and the USA, especially in trendy commercial establishments. The popularity of carnivalesque male restrooms thrives in affluent commercial venues that...