Some popular questions about Bathrooms!
A few popular questions!
WHY are bathrooms interesting to you?
- Even though bathrooms are very small spaces, they are full of paradoxes! On the one hand, we like to think of them as the most private and intimate spaces in the home: they are usually the only rooms that can be locked. On the other hand, few spaces in the home are less personal, in the sense that their designs and equipment are very standardised and are directly hooked up to a vast public infrastructural system beyond. Though we don't see them this way, I see bathrooms as the places where technology, individual bodies, ideology and infrastructure meet.
HOW do we see our bathrooms?
- Although the intimate relationship between bathrooms and the system beyond is evident, we rarely acknowledge it. We don’t like to think of bathrooms as connected to a larger network of pipes or to think about what happens when we flush the toilet. We’ve come to expect a water system that invisibly deals with our waste. Flush and forget.
WHY does this matter?
We are now moving into a period when we can’t be so complacent – globally we’re facing greater environmental pressures, for instance – and we need to start to examine our system and use more critically. Is it still viable that each person in the UK flushes 50l. of drinkable water down the toilet every day? There are design issues too. The average bathroom is little changed since the 1920s. But bathrooms could clearly be safer, healthier, easier to use, and ergonomically better for bodies.
WHAT will it take?
- It's not simple! Bathrooms are still regarded as trivial or even taboo and resistance to change runs deep, as deep as you get. This is because bathrooms practices and spaces are so shaped by other things as well – deep-rooted social beliefs, cultural norms, religious practices, the body, sexuality, and so on. So when you talk about redesigning anything to do with the bathroom, you are talking about changing some deeply rooted social and cultural values as well. It's a huge question: how do you redesign a taboo?
WHAT successful examples do you know of?
- A key era for the public bathroom at least was the 1960s: thanks to the civil rights and feminist movements, we saw the rise of the inclusive bathroom that responded to the needs of the disabled, the aged, and women. In that same decade, many counter cultural types experimented with alternative forms of sanitation – bathrooms that tried to minimize or eliminate the use of water – and to find more appropriate technologies for non-Western or water-stressed contexts.
WHEN and where were the first bathrooms as we know them?
- Surprisingly late. Bathrooms as we know them – that is, dedicated spaces with bath, sink, and toilet – really only began regularly appearing in upper and middle-class homes in the second half of the 1800s and in working class homes in the first half of the 1900s (and sometimes even later).
HOW were bathrooms received?
- Bathrooms were never only about becoming clean; they were about becoming civilized. To wash was to publicly declare one’s morality and decency; not to wash was to publicly declare one’s moral laxness or even criminality.
WHAT were some of the earlier ones like?
- Prior to the rise of the modern bathroom, people made use of a variety of portable devices for bathing, washing, and excreting, from hip baths to washbasins to chamberpots. These moved around the house. For instance, you would have bathed in your bedroom or dressing room or in your kitchen – close to a heat source!
WHAT was the difference between privies and water closets?
- Plumbing. To have water closets required that you had a reliable water supply and that you could get that water supply into your house. Privies were dry systems that didn’t require water to remove waste; rather waste was covered over with ash or earth and left to decompose.
WHAT was the impact of providing public conveniences at the Great Exhibition in 1851?
- Immense. This was still a time when water closets were a luxury; only the wealthy would have regularly have used them. But the Great Exhibition was not only aimed at the wealthy: it was for the working classes too. Huge numbers would have experienced the comfort and convenience of water closets there for the very first time – they were used 827 820 times in total. Their designer, George Jennings, bragged that even before the Exhibition opened, at least 4000 workmen had used the water closets, but that they always remained ‘sweet’.
WHAT impact did cholera have?
Cholera was the most dreaded epidemic of the day – though not the deadliest (that honour went to another water-borne disease, typhoid.) But it was repeated outbreaks of cholera, which in 1848-9 left 14,000 dead in London alone, that finally paved the way for public health legislation and the construction of a city-wide sewerage system. This was a key moment in modernization.
WHAT were a few of the funnier issues in regards to public conveniences?
- The funniest thing from today’s perspective is that people genuinely believed that public conveniences would corrupt women’s morals, probably because they so visibly evoked the baser bodily functions. The fear of corruption is there from the start: soon after the opening of the very first public convenience, in Soho in 1849, the warden of a nearby House of Charity requests that a spring door be installed to prevent women seeing “much that is disagreeable”.
WHEN did bathrooms start to become decorated and furnished?
- Victorian upper- and middle-class bathrooms were often artistic and handsome, arranged like furnished rooms with chairs, carpets, beautifully decorated tiles and ceramic ware encased in fine woods. Lower-class bathrooms were more functional and basic, with exposed pipes and less decoration. It is interesting, however, that in this case, the lower class bathroom carried the day, and for much of the 20th century, elaborate décor in the bathroom was considered repulsive and anti-hygienic.
ANY strange examples of the impact of plastic?
- Plastics changed bathrooms in many ways. The invention of fibreglas, for instance, meant that people could have bathtubs in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes. My personal favourite is the red, heart-shaped bathtubs that began to appear in all the popular North American honeymoon resorts from the mid-1960s.
What is your favourite bathroom?
Jayne Mansfield’s bathroom from the Pink Palace in the 1950s is probably the single most amazing space I came across. Its centrepiece was a gold heart-shaped bath. Every other surface, floors, walls, and ceiling, was gobbled up by pink shag carpet. It’s crazy! Why put carpet on your walls? In the book I call it a ‘cell in a lunatic asylum as conceived by Liberace’ (who also, of course, had a thing for fancy bathrooms.) But there is a logic to it. Mansfield was trying to create a space that was totally removed from the functional, compact reality of most people’s bathrooms. She instinctively understood that it’s only once you free the bathroom from its function that you can fully enter the space of fantasy.
ARE there other similar types?
- Many! The 1960s and 1970s were the great age of the hedonistic bathroom, full of innovations like oversized baths, bathtubs for two and, of course, that ultimate icon of sexual liberation, the Jacuzzi. No self-respecting executive of Playboy would have been without one…
WHAT about modern trends like wet rooms? (are they actually modern?)
- Recently, there’s been a move away from plastics and the kind of smooth artificial surfaces they create. There’s now a return to more natural materials and naturalistic ways of bathing and showering. A wet room, complete with monsoon shower, is no less of a fantasy than Jayne Mansfield’s bathroom. It’s just that now the fantasy is different: we now dream of returning, if not to nature, then to a more ‘natural’ or ‘authentic’ way of getting clean. It’s the bathroom’s equivalent of the slow food movement.
HOW are APC’s viewed? (any anecdotal tales good)
- Automated Public Conveniences, a.k.a. Superloos, are the latest answer to the ‘problem’ of providing public conveniences. Government authorities know that public conveniences are important to keep streets clean and decent, but no longer want the expense of maintaining them. The problem is that people are often scared of fully automated environments. What if it flies open when you have your pants down? What if the cleansing cycle starts when you are still inside? What if it explodes? This once did happen, ironically enough, in Stoke-on-Trent, the heart of Britain ceramics industry.
WHY are bathrooms interesting to you?
- Even though bathrooms are very small spaces, they are full of paradoxes! On the one hand, we like to think of them as the most private and intimate spaces in the home: they are usually the only rooms that can be locked. On the other hand, few spaces in the home are less personal, in the sense that their designs and equipment are very standardised and are directly hooked up to a vast public infrastructural system beyond. Though we don't see them this way, I see bathrooms as the places where technology, individual bodies, ideology and infrastructure meet.
HOW do we see our bathrooms?
- Although the intimate relationship between bathrooms and the system beyond is evident, we rarely acknowledge it. We don’t like to think of bathrooms as connected to a larger network of pipes or to think about what happens when we flush the toilet. We’ve come to expect a water system that invisibly deals with our waste. Flush and forget.
WHY does this matter?
We are now moving into a period when we can’t be so complacent – globally we’re facing greater environmental pressures, for instance – and we need to start to examine our system and use more critically. Is it still viable that each person in the UK flushes 50l. of drinkable water down the toilet every day? There are design issues too. The average bathroom is little changed since the 1920s. But bathrooms could clearly be safer, healthier, easier to use, and ergonomically better for bodies.
WHAT will it take?
- It's not simple! Bathrooms are still regarded as trivial or even taboo and resistance to change runs deep, as deep as you get. This is because bathrooms practices and spaces are so shaped by other things as well – deep-rooted social beliefs, cultural norms, religious practices, the body, sexuality, and so on. So when you talk about redesigning anything to do with the bathroom, you are talking about changing some deeply rooted social and cultural values as well. It's a huge question: how do you redesign a taboo?
WHAT successful examples do you know of?
- A key era for the public bathroom at least was the 1960s: thanks to the civil rights and feminist movements, we saw the rise of the inclusive bathroom that responded to the needs of the disabled, the aged, and women. In that same decade, many counter cultural types experimented with alternative forms of sanitation – bathrooms that tried to minimize or eliminate the use of water – and to find more appropriate technologies for non-Western or water-stressed contexts.
WHEN and where were the first bathrooms as we know them?
- Surprisingly late. Bathrooms as we know them – that is, dedicated spaces with bath, sink, and toilet – really only began regularly appearing in upper and middle-class homes in the second half of the 1800s and in working class homes in the first half of the 1900s (and sometimes even later).
HOW were bathrooms received?
- Bathrooms were never only about becoming clean; they were about becoming civilized. To wash was to publicly declare one’s morality and decency; not to wash was to publicly declare one’s moral laxness or even criminality.
WHAT were some of the earlier ones like?
- Prior to the rise of the modern bathroom, people made use of a variety of portable devices for bathing, washing, and excreting, from hip baths to washbasins to chamberpots. These moved around the house. For instance, you would have bathed in your bedroom or dressing room or in your kitchen – close to a heat source!
WHAT was the difference between privies and water closets?
- Plumbing. To have water closets required that you had a reliable water supply and that you could get that water supply into your house. Privies were dry systems that didn’t require water to remove waste; rather waste was covered over with ash or earth and left to decompose.
WHAT was the impact of providing public conveniences at the Great Exhibition in 1851?
- Immense. This was still a time when water closets were a luxury; only the wealthy would have regularly have used them. But the Great Exhibition was not only aimed at the wealthy: it was for the working classes too. Huge numbers would have experienced the comfort and convenience of water closets there for the very first time – they were used 827 820 times in total. Their designer, George Jennings, bragged that even before the Exhibition opened, at least 4000 workmen had used the water closets, but that they always remained ‘sweet’.
WHAT impact did cholera have?
Cholera was the most dreaded epidemic of the day – though not the deadliest (that honour went to another water-borne disease, typhoid.) But it was repeated outbreaks of cholera, which in 1848-9 left 14,000 dead in London alone, that finally paved the way for public health legislation and the construction of a city-wide sewerage system. This was a key moment in modernization.
WHAT were a few of the funnier issues in regards to public conveniences?
- The funniest thing from today’s perspective is that people genuinely believed that public conveniences would corrupt women’s morals, probably because they so visibly evoked the baser bodily functions. The fear of corruption is there from the start: soon after the opening of the very first public convenience, in Soho in 1849, the warden of a nearby House of Charity requests that a spring door be installed to prevent women seeing “much that is disagreeable”.
WHEN did bathrooms start to become decorated and furnished?
- Victorian upper- and middle-class bathrooms were often artistic and handsome, arranged like furnished rooms with chairs, carpets, beautifully decorated tiles and ceramic ware encased in fine woods. Lower-class bathrooms were more functional and basic, with exposed pipes and less decoration. It is interesting, however, that in this case, the lower class bathroom carried the day, and for much of the 20th century, elaborate décor in the bathroom was considered repulsive and anti-hygienic.
ANY strange examples of the impact of plastic?
- Plastics changed bathrooms in many ways. The invention of fibreglas, for instance, meant that people could have bathtubs in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes. My personal favourite is the red, heart-shaped bathtubs that began to appear in all the popular North American honeymoon resorts from the mid-1960s.
What is your favourite bathroom?
Jayne Mansfield’s bathroom from the Pink Palace in the 1950s is probably the single most amazing space I came across. Its centrepiece was a gold heart-shaped bath. Every other surface, floors, walls, and ceiling, was gobbled up by pink shag carpet. It’s crazy! Why put carpet on your walls? In the book I call it a ‘cell in a lunatic asylum as conceived by Liberace’ (who also, of course, had a thing for fancy bathrooms.) But there is a logic to it. Mansfield was trying to create a space that was totally removed from the functional, compact reality of most people’s bathrooms. She instinctively understood that it’s only once you free the bathroom from its function that you can fully enter the space of fantasy.
ARE there other similar types?
- Many! The 1960s and 1970s were the great age of the hedonistic bathroom, full of innovations like oversized baths, bathtubs for two and, of course, that ultimate icon of sexual liberation, the Jacuzzi. No self-respecting executive of Playboy would have been without one…
WHAT about modern trends like wet rooms? (are they actually modern?)
- Recently, there’s been a move away from plastics and the kind of smooth artificial surfaces they create. There’s now a return to more natural materials and naturalistic ways of bathing and showering. A wet room, complete with monsoon shower, is no less of a fantasy than Jayne Mansfield’s bathroom. It’s just that now the fantasy is different: we now dream of returning, if not to nature, then to a more ‘natural’ or ‘authentic’ way of getting clean. It’s the bathroom’s equivalent of the slow food movement.
HOW are APC’s viewed? (any anecdotal tales good)
- Automated Public Conveniences, a.k.a. Superloos, are the latest answer to the ‘problem’ of providing public conveniences. Government authorities know that public conveniences are important to keep streets clean and decent, but no longer want the expense of maintaining them. The problem is that people are often scared of fully automated environments. What if it flies open when you have your pants down? What if the cleansing cycle starts when you are still inside? What if it explodes? This once did happen, ironically enough, in Stoke-on-Trent, the heart of Britain ceramics industry.
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