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Intelligent bathroom design: the Universal ToiletPosted 09.11.2007 by Dave
To many of us, handicapped stalls are the most glorious achievement in restroom architecture: an area more spacious than most New York City apartments, hand bars for when you really need to bear down, and a mild taboo against use by able-bodied people that keeps it cleaner and more private than most of the other options. But few have considered the reason a handicapped stall is necessary in the first place: because normal stalls require of the user two functional legs, and functional legs are something a small but significant portion of the population lacks.
The Americans With Disabilities Act requires that public accommodations must provide accessible facilities for disabled people. This ensures a building meets the needs of every bathroom-going member of the public. But access comes at a cost: handicapped bathrooms require twice the real estate to provide the same amount of convenience. More money has to be invested in providing less utility. And these stalls aren't exactly easy on the users, either. A wheelchair-bound bathroom-goer has to maneuver his chair back and forth into a position at which he can push his butt off the chair and onto the toilet -- not an easy thing to do when, like any able-bodied user, your biggest concern is to keep you pants from touching the floor. Korean designers Changduk Kim and Youngki Hong have solved this problem with their Universal Toilet. Not only does it require a quarter of the space of a typical handicapped stall, but it provides a single appliance that poopers of all physical abilities can utilize.
The major cognitive breakthrough of the Universal Toilet is the reversible crapper: fully-abled users can assume the standard position facing the door, while handicapped users can easily lift off their chair and mount the throne in the backwards position. Roll up, lift off, unload, push off, roll out. This concept should be embraced by all concerned parties -- building developers, handicapped users, and fully-abled users alike. In addition to saving money and space, the design removes the social stigma many disabled poopers feel is imposed on them by their exclusive stalls. "Disabled people," Kim and Hong say, "don't want dedicated facilities. What they really want is to live seamlessly with everyone." The only obvious fault in this design is fairly trivial: the seat itself. Straddling that angular surface seems to promise an unusual and uncomfortable pooping experience. But everything in a design prototype like this is intentional, which means this seat must have some specific intent. I can think of two: first is that this seat design is just a focal point for criticism. With critics and bloggers focusing on this minor detail, the over-arching idea is accepted as given. Once the seat is redesigned, the critics are placated and the idea itself can move forward without resistance. (It's a trick I've learned whenever presenting work to a boss: provide an obvious flaw for them to correct so they feel like they've done their job.) The second possibility is that the angular seat is designed to force the butt cheeks apart (as opposed to traditional seats, which squish the butt cheeks together). In this, it's possible that Kim and Hong have actually created two revolutionary toilet redesigns: the Universal Toilet, and the Butt Spreading Toilet Seat. (See related poll: Do you spread your cheeks when you sit on the toilet seat?) Come to think of it, there may be a third revolutionary toilet redesign hidden in this Universal Toilet technology: how often do you find a public toilet with a comfortable backrest? Show some poop support, or make a poop retort.
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