work was invested in the whole planning
process. You know, the level of details and
quality in realization”
, an interior designer in her forties explained the equal effort through out the building to be the key element for successful design. The toilet observation proves that often if some kind of special effort is given to the toilet design, it is located to the main toilets. The toilets in the outer zone very seldom draw special attention. Generally, the toilets today are considered as the objects of mass production. Similar units are placed on each level. The cost efficiency and the pipelines going vertically through the building are the main features to determine the rhythm creating the toilet network of the building.Toilet divisions are cultural and time-related. Today in Finland, the toilets divide citizens into men and women. In addition, toilets for special physical needs are required with legislation, and often those are combined with baby care. Equality and access issues are a part of the decisions-making process in the planning phase. The legislation provides requirements and established practices. Often, these issues do not need to be rethought by an individual planner. The toilet culture is strongly related to the society´s current values, and the process of change normally takes time. In the United States, skin color used to be a character of toilet divisions, and in today´s Sweden the unisex toilets are becoming a norm. In some locations, like in the Seinäjoki library, special attention is paid to facilitate the users with specific needs. There, the toilet in the children´s department is equipped with a specific toilet seat for kids.
The physical appearance of the public toilets and their function has been quite standardized for over a hundred years. In public building projects today, the interest towards urinals is starting to decrease. An attempt to provide more privacy for men as well, seems to be in fashion. Only if the location of the men´s room is considered very busy within the amount of visitors, or if it is very limited in space usage are urinals considered a good option. In general the toilet spaces between the two genders do not really differ. The sanitary disposals placed in women´s are actually the only functional difference. Toilets with singular units and no common open space are an often-seen solution in locations with standardized traffic flows. In these places, the gender sign on the door becomes the only notable difference and limiting reason to increase the waiting time.
A 33-year old customer in Kaisa House describes the situation as follows: “I feel stupid when I am waiting behind the men´s and the women´s next to are all free. This stupidity evolves to another level when the one exiting the occupied men´s is a member of the other sex, perhaps just being smart and breaking the rules.” The waiting time is a good example of an unwanted feature in the rhythm of the building created by the design decisions. In some cases, it becomes a detail that creates frustration or misuse. The problems in user flows and the misuse of the divisions are a great way to gather the feedback of the design´s success.
Waiting time is a phenomenon that the toilet users would like to see disappearing. Interestingly, the workshop participants mentioned that spatial details, like the common layout where cubicles are placed symmetrically in a row next to each other, creates a feeling of visiting a toilet factory. “The waiting time and a pressure to be fast as possible increase the amount of stress level I have in public toilets.” a 34-year-old student described the experience of the waiting time. It is calculated that women visiting a toilet take almost three times longer than men because of the difference in anatomy and clothing (Greed 2003). The waiting time, normally faced in the women´s, is the most common topic to raise the equality issues. Interestingly the professionals focusing on the improvements of toilet provision seem to share opinions of a different kind about how the situation should be developed. Some suggest that a good provision of unisex toilets, and design for all, will be the answer. Some campaign for even stronger differentiation by favoring women by 3:1 ratio (Gershenson & Penner 2009).
I claim that each planning process should be considered individually. Suggested solutions, that would facilitate the customers´ need the best, might not be the ones the customer is asking for. The ones creating the toilet plans should really pay attention to the location, be broadminded and brave enough to rethink. The Japanese architect Junko Kobayashi is a great example of this attitude, being a forerunner in the field of toilet design. In her opinion, “a society that gives toilets their due is a society that values life”. She and her customers have understood that toilets are assets of the surrounding building. The toilet experiences are something that the users highly value. In Japan, 80% of her business is toilet design. She really takes each location seriously and has the skills to push the good ideas to the budget so that everything will be realized. Her toilets are highly valued from all dimensions: users, providers and maintainers. (Ono 2013 and Watts 2012)
Public toilets are not only functional combinations of certain objects, but systems, which can be designed to support the citizens´ wellbeing more comprehensively. When considering the toilets as service systems, the gap between the wished user experience and function-based reality, introduced earlier, can be seen as a service opportunity. Service systems include various elements. Not all are concrete, visual touchpoints to the user. Details, like how the maintaining is organized and how the vandalism is taken care of, are part of the whole.