Towards a Restroom Architecture by Evan J. Burnett

TOWARDS A RESTROOM ARCHITECTURE: EXISTENTIAL UNDERSTANDING FROM THE TOILET ROOM

by Evan Joel Burnett

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Architecture MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY Bozeman, Montana May 2015 Cover Image and right: Ellman, Elaine, “Ladies Rooms.” Metropolis Magazine 4. 1988. 48.

DEDICATION

To my parents who have provided for me. _

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thank you to my committee – Barry Newton, Christopher Livingston, and Maire O’Neill – who have afforded me insights in their own, particular fashion. Their varied and curious knowledge has shaped the work through conversation, sticky notes, personal library references, and innumerable eye roles. Their perspectives always leave me with questions, and a desire for more. Thank you to Racheal Ortego, a joyful advisor, who is unequivocally capable of helping me mediate reality with the reality of an architectural education. And thank you to my closest friends who anger, excite, inspire, anticipate, and humor me.

| CONTENTS

| PLACES OF ............................................................................. 38 Places of Bureaucracy ............................................................ 39 Places of Separation ............................................................... 42

| LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................... 7

| TOWARDS A RESTROOM ARCHITECTURE ...................... 47 Restroom World ................................................................... 48

| ABSTRACT .............................................................................. 13

Trenton Jewish Community Center Bath House ................. 50

| PREAMBLE ............................................................................... 14

Technology as Savior ............................................................. 52

| PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION ................................................. 17

| INITIAL CONCLUSIONS ....................................................... 56

| A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW ................................................... 24 Night Soils .............................................................................. 27 The Sanitary Idea and Privacy ................................................ 28

| BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................... 58 | APPENDIX A .......................................................................... 62

Stratifying to Egalitarian ......................................................... 29

The Modernist, the Manufacturer, and the Living Bath ......... 30

| APPENDIX B ........................................................................... 68

| THE PROMPT .......................................................................... 33

| APPENDIX C .......................................................................... 75

Information Visualization ....................................................... 77 Data Visualization .................................................................. 86 Design Primers and Precedent .............................................. 88

Existing Site Plan .................................................................... 92 Selected Design Sketches: Engaging a Cycle .......................... 93 Final Design Boards .............................................................. 106 Costing Analysis for Further Development ......................... 116 2015 Montana State University Research Day .................... 117 Final Design Synthesis .......................................................... 118 Final Anecdote on the Status of the Hydraulic Flush .......... 121

| LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Graham Caine, 'Diagram of Basic Interdependencies', Street Farm, London, 1972. ....................................................... 15 Figure 2: Charles Jencks’ timeline of architectural theory, 1920-2000, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Rizzoli, 1977. ........................................................................................... 18 Figure 3: Analytical diagram of architectural history based on Trevor Garnham’s Architecture Re-Assembled: The Use and Abuse of History, Routledge, 2013. ........................................................ 18 Figure 4: Analytical diagram describing techne as an elemental architecture, based on Demetri Porphyrios’ essay ‘From Techne to Tectonics’ in Classical Architecture, 1991. ............................... 19 Figure 5: Illustration juxtaposing aspects of time using Insel hombroich Museum Park photos from Catherine Dee’s To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility, 2012. ........................... 20 Figure 6: Illustration registering nature via fallen leaves within designed Shisen-do Park photo from Catherine Dee's To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility, 2012. ...................................... 20 Figure 7: Analytical diagram of beings which form the dimensions of existence, based on Christian Norberg-Schulz' text, Existence, Space and Architecture, 1971. .............................. 21 Figure 8: Analytical diagram describing the connection between orientation and the actions by beings upon the physical environment; based on Christian Norberg-Schulz’s text, Existence, Space and Architecture, 1971. ...................................... 22 Figure 9: Analytical diagram describing place, based on Christian Norberg-Schulz’s essay, 'The Phenomenon of Place', 1976. ........................................................................................... 23

Figure 10: Abbreviated timeline of the development of the modern western restroom through understanding of the events, ................................................................................................... 26 Figure 11: Sir John Harington's diagrammed design for a flushable toilet, ca. 1592. ........................................................... 27 Figure 12: Night soil collection in London, England, ca. 1950, from the website, soilmenemptyingtoilettubs1950s_forum.warringtonworldwide.co.uk. ....................................................................... 28 Figure 13: Consumerist fantasy of the bathroom [left] from LIFE Magazine April 1953; in comparison to domestic realization [right] from the website aqua bath-4.bp.blogspot...................... 30 Figure 14: Ad produced by Kohler for a fixture line illustrating the domestic living bathroom, ca. 1956. ................................... 31 Figure 15: Contemporary screwdriver set branded by Craftsman for advertisement, ca. 2014. This indicates a tight formal realization in regards to its 'twisting' function; as an assembly of ubiquitous pieces.................................................... 33 Figure 16: Photograph of interior hallway of the Clyfford Still Museum taken by Allied Works Architecture, 2011, www.alliedworks.com. .............................................................. 35 Figure 17: Cheever Hall corridor photograph by this author indicating enclosure of walls and cavernousness, removed from the exterior world. .................................................................... 35 Figure 18: Photographs of a restroom in Cheever Hall [above] taken by this author, and the restroom in the Clyfford Still Museum [below] taken by Thomas R. Wood, 2012. ................. 36 Figure 19: Photograph of partial model by Farrell/Grimsaw Partnership for design of a bathroom tower with manufactured modules that cheaply and simply "plug-in," 1967. ..................... 39

Figure 20: Accessibility, ANSI A117.1 “Figure 304.3 - Size of Turning Radius”, 2003. ............................................................... 39 Figure 21: Diagram of a typical accessible facility scheme [above, far] with a chart for parity of fixtures in relation to building type and occupant load [above, close], from The Architect's Studio Companion by Allen and Iano, 2012, 195-7. ..... 40 Figure 22: ANSI A117.1 “Figure 604.5.1 - Sidewall Grab Bar for Water Closet" [above, far] and Kohler K-14561 contemporary grab bar product design [above, close]. .............. 41 Figure 23: Monica Bonvicini's London toilet installation, Don't Miss a Sec, 2003-4. Exterior photograph taken by Jennifer Carlile, MSNBC.com, 2004, [left], and photograph of interior while exterior is being washed by Scott Barbour, Getty Images, [right]. ......................................................................................... 42 Figure 24: The two far right toilet stalls within a Minneapolis Airport facility become nationally notorious when US Senator Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in 2007. Photograph from blogs.kansascity.com. 44 Figure 25: Squat analysis diagrams from Alexander Kira's The Bathroom, 1976, page 126-7, indicating morphological changes to the toilet based on the more natural squat evacuation [right] versus the sitting evacuation [left]. ............................................ 45 Figure 26: Restroom World image from 1998 showing qualities of the space. It was appropriated from its mundane, ubiquitous prior existence. Taken by Beverly Gordon from "Embodiment, Community Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in 'Restroom World,' a Backstage Women's Space," [2003]. ......................... 49 Figure 27: Restroom World image of novelty ephemera which was one aspect of the physical presence of the space as an embodiment of beings and of having an identity of its own. Taken by Beverly Gordon from "Embodiment, Community 8

Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in ‘Restroom World,’ a Backstage Women’s Space,” [2003]. ......................................... 49 Figure 28: Nearly finalized plan for bath house. From the Kahn Collection. ................................................................................. 51 Figure 29: Central courtyard. Note the materiality, lifting of the roof off the walls, and central pebble garden providing circumambulation, ca 1950s. kahntrentonbathhouse.org. ........ 51 Figure 30: Dry composting toilet illustrating the cyclical effect from agricultural product to table to toilet to agriculture. catorcekt.files.wordpress.com. .................................................. 54 Figure 31: Kohler's NuMi automated toilet with retractable bidet head, foot warmer, night light, and other features. static0.therichestimages.com. .................................................... 54 Figure 32: Changes in toilet technology [top to bottom]: George Jennings hydraulic WC, ca 1851, Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion WC, ca 1930; and toilet of the future, ca 2014. ....................... 54 Figure 33: Prescriptive Schematic, Exhibit 27-2 Schematic Building Floor Plan, from "Highway Rest Areas and Roadside Parking Areas," 2010. ................................................................ 64 Figure 34: Increasing Disorder In a Dining Table by Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till that traces the occupation of a dining table from its typical to its realized state, 2009. ............. 65 Figure 35: Prescriptive design, Exhibit 4: Preferred Restroom Building Layout Diagram [minimum 2 stalls], in "Park Design Guildelines and Standards", 2014. ............................................. 66 Figure 36: Photograph by this author in the California desert, 2014. .......................................................................................... 69 Figure 37: Texture Detail of Michael Heizer's Double Negative excavated in 1969, Photograph by this author, 2014. ............... 69 Figure 38: Regional site context between Palm Springs and Los Angeles, CA. .............................................................................. 70

Figure 39: Aerial perspective of demolished site, adjacent land, and natural arroyo. .................................................................... 70 Figure 40: Site plan indicating extent of previous construction, CALTRANS land, and BLM land. ............................................... 70 Figure 41: Wildwood SRRA signage photograhed by NBC Los Angeles, 2010. ............................................................................ 70 Figure 42: Average Monthly Temperatures, High-Low. .......... 71 Figure 43: Annual Avg. Wind Direction. ................................. 71 Figure 44: Psychometric Chart with Design Comfort Standards. ................................................................................... 71 Figure 45: Sun Angles by Month, Psychometric Data. ............ 72 Figure 46: Btu/sq.ft per hour of Solar Radiation. .................... 72 Figure 47: Climate Consultant Sustainable Design Considerations Based on Maximizing the Comfort Zone. ........ 72 Figure 48: Philosophical position on architecture concept diagram based on written text and built into a visual system of interrelated concepts [left]. ........................................................ 77 Figure 49: Interrogative of restroom based on understanding from text [above]. ....................................................................... 78 Figure 50: One sequence of building of the interrogative diagram starting with the concept of human evacuation [pages 75-81]. ........................................................................................ 79 Figure 51: This is a critical point in the design process. At this point it was understood that the insertion point for a design to influence the system would be to engage a cycle. Conceptually this would be in line with the philosophical understanding of architecture, as well as the current state of ‘flush and forget.’ By engaging a cycle, such as a composting toilet scheme, an individual would better understand the implications of their bodily functions. This could potentially influence other

relationships in the system of concepts as described in the next few built diagrams. ..................................................................... 82 Figure 52: Usage data on the occupation of safety roadside rest areas. .................................................................................. 86 Figure 53: Primary user group data for California Safety Roadside Rest Areas. ................................................................. 87 Figure 54: Architectural Language of the site context and site analysis collage. .......................................................................... 88 Figure 55: Manifesto on human manure composting. See Jenkins, Joseph. The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure. 3rd ed. Grove City: Joseph Jenikins, Inc., 2005. 11-12. Print. ............................................... 89 Figure 56: Josey Pavilion by Lake | Flato Architects in Decantur, Texas. The project was examined for its use of rainwater collection and wind mitigation strategies. ................ 89 Figure 57: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center campus in Austin, Texas, by Overland Partners and Sanders Architecture with W. Grey Smith as landscape architect. This precedent was analyzed in regards to different methods of creating pathways to nest program and guide users through the landscape. ............. 90 Figure 58: Clivus Multrum © composting toilet system. The understanding of compact composting systems that can handle human fecal composting at a commercial scale was provided by this unique system. .................................................................... 91 Figure 59: Initial translation of concepts in physical design ideas. .......................................................................................... 93 Figure 60: Courtyard climate spatial relationships based on buildings by John Gaw Meem and Lake|Flato. ........................... 94 Figure 61: Thinking about transitions and movement between a datum, an organizing element of the site. ............................... 95

Figure 62: General occupation by public users. Sequence of different scenarios in which someone might occupy the site. ... 96 Figure 63: General schedule of the composting toilets to prime and understanding of how the site will be occupied from an authority standpoint. ............................................................. 97 Figure 64: Schematic diagramming toilet room ideas of occupation. In this sense the diagram does not respond to a five foot diameter circle, but the movement between different functions. .................................................................................... 98 Figure 65: Schematic toilet room design iteration. ................. 98 Figure 66: Schematic site scheme overlay finalized based on pavilion buildings and movement through the landscape and different nested functions. The parking lot stays the same from the pre-existing site plan. This provided a basis to begin laying out a spatial grid on the site and forming the buildings. ............ 99 Figure 67: Design Development, Site Plan and Site Section. Issues arose with confusion about the location of restrooms to the visitor and some general circulation questions. Positives included a consolidation to one restroom facility to prevent emergent segregation, as well as an integration maintenance and visitor functions. ....................................................................... 100 Figure 68: Design Development restroom plan and boardwalk section. The idea behind the design was to allow not only accessibility through an extended ramp experience, but also engage the sloping topography. To the left is a rainwater cistern to collect roof water. Each of the pods are an individual restroom to provide privacy and allow for the ‘family’ restroom so that there are not disenfranchised users based on disability or family status. ........................................................................ 101

Figure 69: Design development of maintenance building to engage the sequence of operations, where compost would be packaged and agricultural products would be processed. ...... 102 Figure 70: Design development of caretaker and state police offices. The portion of the site was redesigned to be a drainage swale. The initial ideas also included an observation tower to begin engaging the edge of the arroyo. This, however, was changed to overlooks at both the restroom areas and the caretaker. ................................................................................. 102 Figure 71: Design development aerial site plan looking to the east. .......................................................................................... 103 Figure 72: Design development occupational perspectives of the site. .................................................................................... 103 Figure 73: Design development maintenance occupational performative specification. ...................................................... 104 Figure 74: Design development performative specification of the restroom spaces and transitional sequences. ................... 105 Figure 75: Site plan, 1/16" = 1'-0". ........................................ 106 Figure 76: Caretaker Plan, 1/16"=1'-0". A portion of the program here was devoted to a cooling tower to help moderation the temperature during the summer time. ......... 107 Figure 77: Maintenance and restroom buildings plan with educational gardens in the center, 1/16"=1'-0". ...................... 107 Figure 78: Site plan analysis images and keyed images. Above, building shadow studies to understand shading on the site. Left top to bottom, Infographics to key site plan with water collection and site activities; site-scale materials; site-scale climatic approach. ................................................................................. 108 Figure 79: Annotated site section north-south. This section describes the relationship of the maintenance cycle interweaved with elements of user occupation. The annotations provide a

narrative to the occupation, and gives a sense of scale to compost production on the site. ............................................. 109 Figure 80: Site section of maintenance building and portion of educational gardens. ................................................................. 110 Figure 81: Site section of toilet room facilities and educational gardens. .................................................................................... 111 Figure 82: Possible movement diagrams on catwalks between boardwalk and toilet room spaces. These become ways to break down the cultural ideas of separation and force people into uncomfortable/not yet comfortable proximities to each other. ........................................................................................ 112 Figure 83: Detailed and annotated toilet room and rest area section. This provides an indication of the layers of space between the actual toilet room and the outside world. As part of the sustainable strategies for the site, a constructed wetland was designed to be a transitional feature. One would cross the wetland, as well as be surrounded by its presence during the process. .................................................................................... 112 Figure 84: Possible experiential perspective from the caretaker pavilion complex. Note directionality towards the restroom toilet spaces.............................................................................. 113 Figure 85: Boardwalk experiential perspective of restroom 'antechamber' space. Note transitions between spaces as well as the various ways to occupy and linger within the spaces. .. 113 Figure 86: Experiential perspective of one of the eddy spaces for lingering before or after use of the toilet facilities. Note maintenance operations in the background. ............................ 114 Figure 87: Experiential perspective of entry to the site after hours. Note: In the background you can see the ghosted image of a person utilizing the restroom, and this begins to indicate a feeling of safety. ........................................................................ 114

Figure 88: Final image to provoke thought on where food might come from and how it is grown. Again, it is about instilling a memory within the occupant so that there is a greater connection between the person and their evacuation process. .................................................................................... 115 Figure 89: As part of an exploration into the value of a restroom architecture, the work turned towards cost analysis. In this case the costs were estimated of the public restrooms in the Clyfford Still Museum. CSMeans data was employed as the primary source, and was used to estimate the construction cost of the in-fill shell of the restroom as well as yearly maintenance and utility costs. It was determined after its creation to be a difficult avenue to pursue, as it was not directly related to rest areas. It would be an advantageous avenue to pursue further into design and physical fruition of space. This would allow ideas not to be driven by economic decisions, which was an issue identified in a previous section, “Places of.” .................. 116 Figure 90: Left The poster presented at Research Day 2015. As part of spreading research done within the School of Architecture to the larger University, this author and a contingency of other graduate students producing research submitted abstracts for the 2015 Student Research Day on the MSU campus. Valuable insights were gained from this experience not only in relation to how to present the research, but how people would react. The reactions I got to the title of the research itself were both negative and positive. On the negative end were people who read the initial title, scolded the research, and then moved onto a different project. On the positive end were people who were curious about ‘why?’ Why is the restroom important? Why spend a year struggling with the topic? From this presentation, this author was also able to 11

find holes in the transitions between steps in the research and design processes. For example, there needed to be a clarification in the transition between the observation and the composting toilet design problem [engaging a cycle]. The 2015 MSU Student Research Day was on April 9, 2015, and this author participated in the afternoon session of the presentations. ........................................................................... 117

| ABSTRACT

considered an architecture of devices, separate from the architecture they exist within, and controlled by formula and economical function rather than by design ethics.

This research interrogates how people occupy the toilet room – a modern space essential to functions of our human

These findings indicate the need to reevaluate toilet room

being. At the essence of the analysis is exploring the mundane;

design to better accommodate the overall human experience.

the everyday life-world in which we exist. A discussion of the

The research may then influence broader discussions

Western relationship to the toilet as a fixture, and a statement

surrounding the value of architectural design as a discipline,

of the overall philosophical position on architecture frame the

gender-equity relationships, contemporary morality within

boundaries of the inquiry. Through qualitative historical and

capitalistic societies, and so forth.

contemporary interpretations of the gender segregated

development and occupation of toilet spaces, along with quantifiable analysis of such factors like cost and usage, the research creates a base-level description of the typical toilet room. From the base-level description the research then provides examples through architectural design of “improved” toilet room conditions. The work then delves into reinterpreting the physical qualities of toilet spaces in relation to the socio-cultural occupation through the design of a safety roadside rest area along 1-10 in Southern California, in addition to the collection of first-person occupation narratives. From the initial interrogation, it was determined that toilet rooms can be

| PREAMBLE

Kundera’s anecdote provides a colloquial characterization of the human relationship to the restroom – specifically a fixture known as the toilet; also known as the john, the bathroom, the

Captured by the Germans during the Second World

comfort station, the privy, the rest stop, the WC [water closet],

War, he [Stalin’s son, Yakov] was placed in a camp

the shitter, the potty, the latrine, the public convenience, the

together with a group of British officers. They

halting station, the washroom, in addition to sundry other

shared a latrine. Stalin’s son habitually left a

euphemisms and vulgarities culturally conceived and guiltily, or

foul mess. . . They brought it to his attention again

more often irreverently, expressed. All at once Kundera ties

and again, and tried to make him clean the latrine

together issues of sanitation and ideology, control and

. . . Stalin’s son could not stand the humiliation. . .

existence. The toilet becomes a proxy for being and being

he took a running jump into the electrified barbed-

together.

wire fence. . . He hit the target. . . In one way Kundera’s latrine describes the human condition. If rejection and privilege are one and the same, if

In the most primal sense of human condition, we live to eat to

there is no difference between the sublime and the

live. Survival is dependent on the consumption and impending

paltry, if the Son of God can undergo judgment

discharge of resources. Everything else – including the

for shit, then human existence loses its dimensions

hormonal impulsion for sexual reproduction – is secondary,

and becomes unbearably light.1

stemming from factors external to our individual being. The hormonal impulse for sexual reproduction is impenetrably cloudy. Attraction, physical desire, and erotic pleasure continue to unfold beyond traditional notions of sexuality. These impulse-related conditions do not exist in all

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being [New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1984] 243-4.

humans. Asexuality, for example, is a described human state,

which is the lack of any sexual desire at all. On the other end

is a straightforward, ubiquitous process. Its cycle is not

of the spectrum, hyperactive sexual desire disorder is also a

escapable. The toilet is a relatively recent receptacle of the

described human state. While undoubtedly part of our physical

discharge, but is integral to modern society as we know it.

body, the sexual hormonal impulse is neither universal nor

Without the toilet, or equivalent fixture like the medieval

required for being – yes, it acts as a primitive driver of being,

chamber pot, our connection to this bodily process would

but its absence does not preclude being.

become tenuous, and would distance ourselves from our existence. Kundera’s latrine is thus an [quite possibly the] enduring physical artifact of our human being. In the same way the relationship of the beings together in the anecdote foreshadows the enigma of the shared latrine: the individual’s treatment of it. The ‘foul mess’ is Kundera’s quite polite description. It’s concise formulation has undoubtedly been experienced by everyone. Traces of fecal matter and fluids bespatter the fixture and nearby surfaces. Ownerless hairs are present on both the fixture and the floor. Mud and slop from boots is on the floor. And most egregiously, the

Figure 1: Graham Caine, 'Diagram of Basic Interdependencies', Street Farm, London, 1972.

Basic thermodynamics governs our being in an empirical sense. What is described as our metabolism is the a priori mechanism for our being. Metabolism drives our bodies which in turn drive to continue living. Beyond the complexities of chemical reactions, the consumption and discharge of resources

evacuation is still present in the fixture. The ‘foul mess’ imagined is indicative of a lack of respect for not only the fixture and the others who must use the fixture, but indicates a severe lack of self-respect. Kundera then ties the connection between the individual and individuals together through the reference to the Christian

tradition. Joseph Stalin’s stature as God in Russia during the Twentieth Century means that Yakov Dzhugashvili was the Son of God.2 Yakov, the Son of God, evacuated. Evacuation is therefore transcendent of humans and divinities. Why, then, was it a ‘humiliation’ for Yakov to maintain the cleanliness of the latrine, if evacuation is not delimited? Why, then, is the toilet room referenced through vulgarity with guilt or irreverence? Why, then, do we not respect the fixture that keeps our being? These questions indicate a paradox of the toilet room, and beg, “What are these places?” _

While an extensive theological discussion of the morality of evacuation is beyond this text’s scope, meaning can be derived from the anecdote without drowning in the doctrinal deep-end.

| PHILOSOPHICAL POSITION First thing is first. What is architecture? Architecture is not simply a style, as aspect of the

Asked in some capacity since the first constructions by

history of art of a period or an expression of the

humans, this question pervades society today. ‘The first

spirit-of-the-age, but the habitable world of

constructions by humans’ itself presents difficulties: what

humans. 3

qualifies as a ‘construction’; how do you determine the ‘first’; and when was the ‘first’? All of these questions cannot be

progress has become intertwined with a teleological

addressed absolutely. Therefore, the prerogative is to establish

conception of history. Combined with . . . the spirit

qualifications as boundaries and/or limitations, which provides a

of the age and simplistically applied to architectural

backdrop for debating the quality of the human environment.

history, this forms a dangerous cocktail of concepts that removes humanity from the frame.4

As architecture is considered a professional practice – practice – it falls in line with the continual evolution of law or

Not only excrement but the body itself, it was

the medical field. There is not an endgame or destination per

discovered, emanates bad odors . . . The new

se. What can be said is that architecture seems to be a

individual feels compelled to live in a space

continuation of what has come before. An unfolding occurs as

without qualities and expects everyone else to

the trajectory of society pushes forward with development of

stay within the bounds of his or her own skin. 5

architectural ideas informed by technology, ideology, economics, tastes, and so on. What emerges is a thick, amorphous, undulating, swelling entity.

Trevor Garnham, Architecture Re-Assembled, [Oxford: Routledge, 2013], xii.

Ibid, xii. Ivan Illich, H2O and the Waters of Forget-fulness, [New York: Marion Boyars, 1986], 60.

The entity is not two-dimensional along a fixed line, but exists in multiple dimensions. Charles Jencks has developed a

patches of dormancy. Jencks’ timeline maps veritable ideological pedigrees all culminating in the previously posited notion that architecture unfolds in relation to the trajectory of society. The concept of ideological pedigree manifests itself in what Trevor Garnham describes as the ‘cultural memory’ [Fig. 3]. The cultural memory of architecture encompasses history, tradition, and memory in a most basic sense.6 Cultural memory is an orienteering mechanism for beings within the world, as it allows an understanding of the trajectory along which beings together Figure 2: Charles Jencks’ timeline of architectural theory, 1920-2000, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Rizzoli, 1977.

are traveling.

timeline of architectural theory that begins to relate this idea, but limits it two-dimensionally [Fig. 2]. Jencks’ timeline realizes that architecture grows out of an active society that ebbs and flows. What it lacks is a spatial dimension. The spatial dimension could be generated by many possible conditions: distance by geography, distance by social structure, population, and so forth; essentially some sort of morphological agency to

Figure 3: Analytical diagram of architectural history based on Trevor Garnham’s Architecture Re-Assembled: The Use and Abuse of History, Routledge, 2013.

make it perceivable as a living, dynamic descriptor instead of A manifestation of cultural memory is the physical

simply a diagram.

environment – both natural and constructed. The physical Given Jencks’ timeline, though, indicating the brief clip of architectural history from 1920-2000, it can be understood that there are layers of information with bursts of diverse ideas and

environment includes constants which provide an understanding of such concepts as inside and outside, origin and destination, 6

Garnham, [2013], vii-xii.

and even the socio-cultural totality.7 The natural environment

compounds made by microorganisms within the soil, all under

includes topography, vegetation, and climate.8 These external

innate constraints imposed by the universe. These processes are

elements allow a person to see themselves at different scales

done out of a merciless necessity, however, not out of an

within the environment. Similarly, a person sees themselves in

intention. Intention requires the possibility to act against

the constructed environment in conjunction with the natural

necessity, and thus the tree does not make, nor does the sun,

environment. Over time, the individual orients itself in order

nor do the microorganisms.

to, “bring meaning and order to his world.”9 _ Reiterating an initial posit: questions of ‘what is architecture’ cannot be answered absolutely but through establishing qualifications. What has been established is one, architecture is an evolving, unfolding entity that two; is perceivable by beings through a collective cultural memory in order to three; spiritually orient beings in the physical environment. The question becomes how is the architecture of the physical environment generated, or more so, how does it emerge? To address this inquiry is an examination of making. ‘To make’ a being accesses a knowledge founded on constraints, such as rules, in order to realize an intention [Fig. 4]. A tree makes sucrose from the ultraviolet light made by the sun after gasses held by the sun undergo nuclear fission and from nutrient

Figure 4: Analytical diagram describing techne as an elemental architecture, based on Demetri Porphyrios’ essay ‘From Techne to Tectonics’ in Classical Architecture, 1991.

Intentioned making can be framed acutely through Catherine Dee’s concept, the aesthetics of thrift. Dee’s concept is principled to scale a person within a complex collection of environments that together are holistic. A being concurrently perceives the environment, physical and natural, in isolation but recognizes them all together whether or not immediately perceptible as such.

Christian Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space, & Architecture, [Praeger, 1971], 7-25. Ibid, 7-25. 9 Ibid, 9. 8

The aesthetics of thrift is a designer’s active, creative

temporal media: vegetation, moving water, the sky.11 Rock-hard

judgment to determine utility and goodness in regards to

time reflects immutable temporal media: rock, stone, terrain.12

defining the physical environment with care and precision.10

And evergreen time reflects the intersection of the two:

Dee helps defines this concept with a series of principles, but of

topiary, the lawn.13 Each piece describes the world in which

particular interest to intentioned making are time and

beings exist, and is requisite knowledge of constraints

registration.

collectively within all things – made of intention or otherwise. This requisite knowledge builds dimension into architecture of the physical environment.

Figure 5: Illustration juxtaposing aspects of time using Insel hombroich Museum Park photos from Catherine Dee’s To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility, 2012.

Dee describes three aspects of time: soft, rock-hard, and

Figure 6: Illustration registering nature via fallen leaves within designed Shisen-do Park photo from Catherine Dee's To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility, 2012.

evergreen [Fig. 5]. Soft time reflects immediately dynamic 10

Catherine Dee, To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility [New York: Routledge, 2012] 10-1.

11 12 13

Dee, [2012], 49. Ibid, 49. Ibid, 49.

The second principle informing intentioned making from the

interaction of these various levels allows a being opportunities

aesthetics of thrift is the direct or indirect registration of

to understand its own substance in relation to the physical

elements. Elemental register allows sensual apprehension of

environment. Therefore, together the scales of closeness to

elements – qualities, entities, processes, and so forth – of the

the physical environment and closeness to the self formulate the

specific geographic, cultural, and temporal physical environment

intimate dimensions of a being’s existence.

in which the elements exist.14 Apprehension of elements by other beings is the translation of what the intentional maker discerns as significant within the physical environment [Fig. 6]. Why, then, intentional making? If one accepts the previous established argument of cultural memory as an orienting mechanism, beings and beings together have a dimensional relationship to each other and the physical environment. Dee begins to sound out this dimensionality by establishing how to intentionally make as a function of closeness to the physical environment. Why, though, is a function related to the closeness to the self? Closeness within a being is the recognition of the individual self as real, as substantial, and is manifested by the intimate levels of being: the hand and the body as a generator of the mind and as a perceiver of the world respectively [Fig. 7].15 The

Figure 7: Analytical diagram of beings which form the dimensions of existence, based on Christian Norberg-Schulz' text, Existence, Space and Architecture, 1971.

_ In order to qualify what architecture of the physical environment is related to the how and why for its intentional making, the examination turns to a description of observable qualities of space. Michael Benedikt engages a description of quality space through a being’s ‘direct esthetic experiences of the real’. These experiences function to intimately connect being’s exterior and interior closeness by means not of total

14 15

Dee, [2012], 57. Norberg-Schluz, [1971], 7-25.

accommodation by the physical environment, but by its

Presence is, a tautness, attentiveness,

indifference.16

assertiveness; Significance is the formation of, a bond . . . between the designer/owner/builder and

Benedikt references John Gardner, a twentieth century

the user;” Materiality is, a palpability, a

literary critic, “fiction is ultimately to be grounded in our

temperature, a weight, and inertia, an inherent

common experience of the world outside fiction if . . . we are

strength; Emptiness1 is the, offering opportunity

not to spiral endlessly away from reality.”17 Gardner is saying

rather than giving direction; and Emptiness2 is a

that fiction should be immediately perceptible as such; fiction

perpetual incompleteness through, the pull of an

not recognizable as such disorients a being. Gardner does not

empty room for us to enter and dwell there.19

say that mystery or ambiguity between fiction and reality should not exist, as uncertainty adds dimension to the experience of

Synergistically, these qualities of the physical environment hold

the world. Instead, a fiction totally imitating or even existing as

beings close, clarifying and securing the dimensions of a being’s

a reality dislocates and thus disorients a person from closeness

existence. As metrics, these qualities determine architecture in

to the physical environment and ultimately from closeness

context of its intentional making.

within themselves, “If every thought conjured a reality . . . the

world would degenerate into a nightmarish Fantasy Island.”18 To combat fiction, Benedikt presents series of qualities that formulate direct esthetic experiences of the real: presence, significance, materiality, and emptiness.

Michael Benedikt, For an Architecture of Reality [New York: Lumen Books, 1987] 12. John Gardener, On Moral Fiction, [New York: Basic, 1978]. This is Benedikt’s interpretation on Gardner’s text 18 This author’s, not Benedikt’s, emphasis. Benedikt, [1987], 12.

Figure 8: Analytical diagram describing the connection between orientation and the actions by beings upon the physical environment; based on Christian Norberg-Schulz’s text, Existence, Space and Architecture, 1971.

Common between Benedikt’s qualities is their activation by beings, also known as the creation of ‘place.’ What is

Together these qualities are the synergy of realness. Benedikt, [1987], 32-60.

materiality if beings are not close to feel it; to fully sense the

Thinking of the brick wall in January, the heat energy from

radiating warmth of a brick wall on a sunny day in January?

the sun is absorbed through the day. The heat energy then

Activation indicates initial or return action on the physical

radiates back into the environment drawing people closer as

environment conceivable as the action-reaction relationship of

they pass along the sidewalk or are waiting for a bus. A dove

Newtonian physics. Simply stated, activation starts with the

lands on the edge of the brick entablature protruding from the

formation of paths, which together form domains, which in turn

edge of the wall. While basking in the sun and the wall’s

generates place [Fig. 8]. There is a back and forth flow between

warmth, returns to the world a melody. All of a sudden an

beings and the paths, domains, and places; expressed tangibly

entire place formed relative to the phenomenon of the wall.

and intangibly in a myriad of phenomena [Fig. 9].

Paths were reoriented and the domain of the bus stop shifted because of the specific conditions of the wall; closeness within beings is formed as they relate their own substance to the physical environment, orienting themselves within the world. _ Just as heat energy is the reaction byproduct of an action such as rubbing two sticks together, place is the byproduct of people and the physical environment. Places are then manifestations of beings within the world. By encompassing the physical environment, the phenomenon of place is integral to a holistic understanding of architecture: a collective cultural memory created by intentional making emergent from its context in order to draw people closer to themselves and the environment, thereby securing them within the dimensions society’s trajectory.

Figure 9: Analytical diagram describing place, based on Christian Norberg-Schulz’s essay, 'The Phenomenon of Place', 1976.

| A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW 1539. King Francois I of France issues a series of edicts. The first As soon as you flush the toilet, you’re in the middle

edict, released in August of that year, reasserts the authority of

of ideology. 20

the King of France and the divine authority of the French monarchy. This was done by means of switching the official

[For the Victorian Bourgeoisie] Sexuality was

language of laws from the traditional Latin – of the Catholic

carefully confined; it moved into the home. The

Church – to contemporary French, expressly so that all subjects

conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it

of the monarchy will be able to understand the laws, without

into the serious function of reproduction. 21

question or ambiguity. The second edict, released in November of that year, essentially states that the city of Paris is disgusting:

smell, the strongest sense of memory, is the key to the door of the ‘mundus imaginalis.’ From this point

Francois, King of France by the Grace of God,

of view, bathrooms are the modern locus of the

makes known to all present and all to come our

odor of sanctity . . . the current golden gates to a

displeasure at the considerable deterioration visited

beatific life. 22

upon our good city of Paris and its surroundings . . . Furthermore, it is so filthy and glutted with mud,

the worse a city smelled, the richer it was. 23

animal excrement, rubble, and other offals that one and all have seen fit to leave heaped before their doors . . . that it provokes great horror and greater displeasure in all valiant persons of substance.24

‘Slavoj Žižek on Toilets and Ideology’, www.youtube.com, 2012. Michel Foucault, trans. Robert Hurley, The History of the Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction, [New York: Vintage Books, 1990], 3. 22 Marco Frascari, “The Pneumatic Bathroom,” Plumbing: Sounding Modern Architecture, ed. Nadir Lahiji and DS Friedman, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997, 172. 23 Andre E. Guillerme, The Age of Water [N.p.: Texas A&M University Press, 1988], 171. 21

Dominique LaPorte, trans. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el-Khoury, History of Shit [Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000], 3-4.

Francois’ Edict indicates a distance between the life of privilege and resultant unknowing 25 with both the reality of life

conveniences were the streets themselves in addition to serving as disposal locations for private household wastes.26

for the commoner and the reality of the economy in the sixteenth century. At this time the economy was very much

The November 1539 Edict turns these quotidian – in the

tied to agriculture and its subsidiaries; all methods of cultivating

most mundane, non-judgmental sense of the word – realities

the land and deriving a saleable product beyond subsistence

into one, highly regulated activities; and two, into activities that

level. This meant livestock. This meant livestock in the city.

should inspire disgust. No longer would livestock, certain

This meant odorous shit.

industries processing agricultural byproducts, and agricultural wastes be allowed within the city walls. And the Edict equates

More than the unavoidable process of shit production, this

disgrace with living alongside these activities through its

meant other materials what may be referred to in a modern

provocation of disgust within ‘all valiant persons of substance’ –

sense as odorous wastes. Entrails from all manner of

such as himself, the King.

domesticated livestock to harvested animals would be disposed of in the street markets along with other detritus from

Coming from “God’s” extension on Earth, this was a

processing crops. Moreover other subsidiary agricultural

powerful statement. King Francois I overnight shames the

industries, such as tanneries cleaning animal hides of their

people of France; reaffirms and possibly augments his authority;

previous owners, would run without regard to disposal of

while setting into motion the progressive West’s privatization of

organic, rotting waste. While concentrated in major market

waste and contemporary relationship with the toilet room. As

localities and businesses within the city, humans were dealing

far as the development of the toilet room fixtures and the room

with their waste in much the same manner. Public

as a space, though, nothing would begin to appear until the late eighteenth century. _

Divisions of class and hierarchical struggles are key issues in the understanding of the restroom and its artifact, the toilet. These issues are explored at great length through the lens of sexuality by Foucault, but are also dealt with in much the same manner by Kundera, especially in the anecdote of Yakov Dzhugashvili.

Guilllerme, [1988], 165

26Â Â

Figure 10: Abbreviated timeline of the development of the modern western restroom through understanding of the events, governmental legislation, and the overall concepts describing the cultural attitudes during the development.

The first accredited toilet as might be comparable to the

Elizabeth I, this development hints at the beginnings of class

western fixture of today was developed in 1592 by Sir John

division within the realm of evacuation just as the November

Harington of England. Conceived to ‘flush’ by hydraulically

Edict of 1539 did with all waste. This invention set a new

removing human evacuation, Harington’s toilet was part of an

standard of the exclusivity of wealth and privilege.

intricate system that eventually discharged into a moving water

body [Fig. 11]. As Harington was the Godson of Queen

Night Soils It was not until the late eighteenth century that the first flush toilets were actually patented in England, and were beginning to be developed as consumer products. Up until then the common culturally and economically acceptable method of waste disposal was using the streets within an urban condition or a cesspool within more rural conditions where land was readily available. Waste was then dissolved away through both weather events and human effort or was collected. As King Francois I discovered, putrefaction of waste in combination with humidity holding odors in the air were the essence of cities.27 It meant industries and it meant people and it meant wealth. Citizens found incredible value in excrement, though, in its reuse. Hired - and at times rogue with the implications of the November 1539 edict – labor would collect

Figure 11: Sir John Harington's diagrammed design for a flushable toilet, ca. 1592.

Referenced in some capacity by Guillerme, 1988, Penner, 2013, and LaPorte, 2000, in regards to putrefaction, cities, and economic success.

the refuse of the city for final destinations being in personal backyard gardens as well as large agricultural fields. Composting

The Sanitary Idea and Privacy

processes transformed the crude excrement into fertilizers to enrich the fields that produced the food that would eventually become the excrement, again.28

Over the next two hundred years after the first flushable toilet was invented, there would be a major shift in scientific knowledge: the miasma theory of disease. This emerged from the seventeenth century Enlightenment in Western Europe, and at its core proposed the spreading of disease was caused by the exchange of gases. Rightly the fear of disease [especially the typically epidemic cholera] within populations would incite changes in cultural practices and perceptions. Illich writes, Nevertheless, the perception of the city as a place that must be constantly washed is of recent origin

Figure 12: Night soil collection in London, England, ca. 1950, from the website, soilmenemptyingtoilettubs1950s_forum.warrington-worldwide.co.uk.

. . . The reason most often given for this constant toilette is not the visually offensive features of waste

Collected excrement, also known as ‘night soils’, is a major

or the residues that make people slip on the street

foundational concept in the understanding of the toilet. It

but bad odors and their dangers.29

represents the holistic treatment of excrement. The collection of excrement connects us with our body and its processes; provides a consideration to the natural environment by utilizing a resource in closed-cycle manner; and delivers a product to the economic marketplace. This concept, while not always completely embraced, has remained relevant to date. 28

David Harvey, “Possible Urban World,” The Fourth MegaCities Lecture, 2000.

Cultural perceptions of smell progressed into a heightened awareness of odor and its perceived evils. Odor becomes a detectable element to indicate class division and broader issues of societal shame. Illich writes, 29

Illich, [1986], 47.

acceptable. Again, returning to France, all manner of royalty Not only excrement but the body itself, it was

would openly evacuate as they received visitors, “Kings, princes,

discovered, emanates bad odors . . . The new

and even generals treated it as a throne at which audiences

individual . . . expects everyone else to stay within

could be granted.”33 However, the effect of the government

the bounds of his or her own skin. He learns to be

sanitary idea institutionalized bodily functions as shameful and

ashamed when his aura is noticed. . . and he is

embarrassing and better left as privatized, contained evil.34

sickened by others if they smell.30 Stratifying to Egalitarian The cultural perception of odor in relation to disease set the stage for western governmental mandated sanitary conditions

Standard Functions,

and was closely allied with moral reform of the nineteenth

Standard needs,

century.31 The Public Health Act of 1848 in London, England,

Standard objects,

and the subsequent water conservation and quality legislation,

Standard dimensions.35

intimately intervened in the personal domain of evacuation. The Removing evacuation from the public realm and moving it to

Act mandated private residences be equipped with a proper mechanism for disposal of waste whether toilet, privy [drains

the private realm impacted the conception of water and

into a cesspool], or ashpit 32 thereby eliminating the odorous

plumbed fixtures. These things became products; things to be

causing excrement from the public realm and/or eliminating the

had, purchased, and owned. Commodification, however, would

odor.

serve to further stratify the population, as water was sold by a

While up until the Victorian Era insisting upon moral reform, open evacuation and evacuation together was socially 30 31 32

Illich, [1986], 60. Penner, [2013], 58. Ibid, 53.

Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent [New York: The Viking Press, 1960], 102. Segregation of the sexes also emerges out of the sanitary idea as well. Ladies are not acknowledged by the public as having evacuations, while men are acknowledged as having evacuations but should be shielded from women and society so as not to offend or instigate indecency. For the toilet this forms the concept of privacy and of privatization of waste described by Laporte, 2000. 35 Le Corbusier, Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning [1930], trans. Edith Schreiber Aujame [Cambridge, MA, 1991], 108. 34

market rate to those who had purchasing power.36 Those who

normative users - even when characterized as normative

could not afford it – the working class who the sanitary idea

disabled users - were typically white males in prime physical

was meant to address – would be caught between the dogmatic

condition. People with disabilities of varying scales, aging

moral issue of sanitation and pecuniary burden.37

people, children, women, personalities, and so forth were not being considered. This led to the development of such egalitarian philosophies as Universal Design, which casts the broadest net within its standards to include, ‘anyone discriminated against by architecture'.38 Western culture and western design, however, maintain these opposing courses. Not only does stratification in terms of commodification of sanitary fixtures persist, but hosts itself within other hierarchical systems such as sex segregation of facilities and the government adoption of benign standards that

Figure 13: Consumerist fantasy of the bathroom [left] from LIFE Magazine April 1953; in comparison to domestic realization [right] from the website aqua bath-4.bp.blogspot.

are overall not totally inclusive. Egalitarianism is thus continually foiled by imbedded stratifying systems.

In the shift from the nineteenth to twentieth century, public toilets and available fittings for private spaces were increasingly

The Modernist, the Manufacturer, and the Living Bath

exposed as physically excluding user groups. Such standards to address differences in physiology and ability, such as ANSI

Progressively western norms shifted back and forth

A117.1, were developed from ‘normative users’. These

between the stratifying and egalitarian, and architectural

doctrine rationalized the oscillation. The modernist movement

Penner, [2013], 68. Commodification was also part of the domestication of women. As these fixtures were portrayed as objects femininity, class, and stardom during the 20th century, they become appropriated as objects of fantasy; the heart-shaped honeymoon tub for example. See Penner, [2013], 174-181.

This includes, for example, potty parity, which mandates equivalent space of bathrooms for men and women. US Potty Parity laws require the same square footage, yet for every one male water closet, two female water closets are needed. See Penner, 2013, 226.

of the late nineteenth through mid-twentieth century feverously

around the domestic bathroom, focused on the individual’s

embraced contemporary technology and the trajectory of

hedonistic desires. As the prevalence of central heating

industry. One arena included in this embrace was the toilet.

appeared within the bathroom in the late 1950s, it became a place to stay or ‘linger’, and stimulated a voluptuous size

To the modernists, the toilet was an evolving design from

increase to accommodate the family unit [Fig. 12].41 Today this

the natural processes of mechanization stimulated by function

has translated into the bathroom – toilet and bath – being a

and the necessity of its use; thereby enveloping a different

private showpiece of personal taste, focused on fantasy,

dimension as the most natural container of our body’s evil from

narcissism, and pleasure.

a clinical, sanitary perspective.39 This new dimension initiated a shift in toilet room fixture design through the inclusion of outside designers in the manufacturer’s sphere. Previously, the architect had let go of any control associated with fittings, leaving their inception and creation completely to the manufacturer.40 Fittings, however, now thought of as established evolutionarily, were in reality emergent from market-driven, topical reiterations of the same construction patented in the 1770s. Figure 14: Ad produced by Kohler for a fixture line illustrating the domestic living bathroom, ca. 1956.

The modernist utilitarian clinical function of the toilet and The other path grew around the public restroom. This path

cleaning facilities took two divergent paths. One path grew

encompasses the convergence of latent cultural conceptions of

Penner, [2013], 123-5. 40 Toilet and bathing spaces were perceived as ‘inferior’ to architectural consideration. Modernism, while seeing toilets as a pure product of mechanized production accommodating the human being, recognized its importance, but did little to influence the actual design and conception of the public toilet beyond surface treatment. See Penner, [2013], 191.

sanitation and privacy, institutionalized and unconsidered parity standards, and the complacent perpetuation of vestigial, purely 41

Penner,[ 2013], 181-6.

market-driven fixtures. Together these represent an oversimplification of the restroom as purely utilitarian space, controlled more by structures external to human being than beings themselves. Referring back to Kunderaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s anecdote of Yakov Dzhugashvili, this path is illustrated by vulgarity and disrespect towards others. _ This review of historical context provides a basis for understanding the human relationship to the restroom. What is apparent is that the western toilet room is inextricably twined with social status and decentralized control, as it was born from privilege and forced on all. Moreover the toilet room is locked in an inharmonious battle with itself as it tries to one, reconcile its homogeneous development lineage with the realities of heterogeneous users, and two, reconcile its current trajectory split between the realm of beings close to themselves and the realm of beings close to each other. Again, what are these places? What follows is an observation. _

32Â Â

| THE PROMPT The restroom is a device. “Device” in its broadest sense can be considered a tool; Production is a ‘utilitarian tyranny of technique’

something that is a means to an end. A tool is a designed object

which feeds into the production of place. This is

or non-physical conception, that itself has an end, a limit,

part of the ‘self-alienation of man’ caused by

controlled by tight functional constraints. Morphological

technological rationalization; a crisis combatted by

changes occur not out of changes to the function served but out

the human states of existence; one of which is the

of the varying conditions of the served. Exterior functional

status as an organism of ‘primal need.’42

changes necessitate the complete revaluation of the tool, thereby changing it into something else entirely.

Without being fully aware of it, they [architects] had gradually ceded control over [to manufacturers] one of the most potentially significant aspects of the built environment.43 The aura of any work of art, from toilets to symphonies, sculptures to installations, is almost entirely dependent on the performative aura of the architecture within which they exist, and with which they interact.44

Figure 15: Contemporary screwdriver set branded by Craftsman for advertisement, ca. 2014. This indicates a tight formal realization in regards to its 'twisting' function; as an assembly of ubiquitous pieces.

This author’s paraphrased analysis of Kenneth Frampton’s essay “On Reading Heidegger” [1974] published within Kate Nesbitt’s anthology Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture [New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996], 442-446. 43 Penner, [2013], 130. 44 Paolo Tombesi and Andrew Martel, “Vessels of Expression and Flows of Innovation,” Journal of Architectural Education 59.2 [2005], 43-52.

For example, a screwdriver functions as a device to twist a secondary object capable of receiving its specific head. In the history of its use, the head of the device has not changed – it 33

can vary by a type, but not in the purpose – nor has the twisting

office building or school or warehouse or concert hall, while the

function. What has and can change in the morphology are

other might be within a museum or restaurant or library or

properties that serve varying conditions: scale of the exterior

airplane. The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, and

receiving object; location of the exterior receiving object; or

Cheever Hall on the campus of Montana State University in

head type of the receiving object. The moment a screwdriver is

Bozeman, Montana, will act as a discussable comparison.

not used to twist, it becomes a misappropriated tool, such as a shiv, or it becomes useless and ultimately nothing.

As a device the western toilet room explicitly serves the

tectonic realization. Through composing complexities of form

function of containment and eventual removal – not necessarily

and light in regards to materiality,46 the spaces within the

disposal – of human evacuations via the toilet. The explicit

Museum elevate occupants’ perceptions of not only the art of

function of the toilet room does not include the cleansing of

Clyfford Still, 47 but also the feeling of being within the world.

skin via the sink, or the disposal of sanitary napkins via trash receptacles, or any various other parasitic functions. 45 What

The Clyfford Still Museum communicates its modernity in

this point indicates is that as a device serving a function, it exists

regards to technological sophistication, but places the emphasis

and is designed for today is as means to an end; limited by its

of creation and accommodation not on the machine but on the

own physical boundaries; an object. Its design cannot

human. Man forges the steel, mills the wood, and builds the

accommodate anything secondary without becoming

form. Man observes the natural world, abstracts the qualities,

misappropriated.

and carefully caresses a composition that is accessible and

intimately perceptible. And through this communication across Illustrative of this concept is to imagine two public toilet

rooms within two different buildings. One might be within an

This can be illustrated non-hydraulically through the National Park Service built and maintained vault-toilet ‘comfort stations,’ and hydraulically through state Department of Transportation built and maintained flush-toilet ‘safety rest areas.’ Both of these present unique situations where function is manifest fully.

The overall material aesthetic is of board formed concrete walls and ceiling warmed and toyed with by the soft, brown wood board elements and powder-coated steel. 47 Still was an abstract expressionist painter from the 20th century. His namesake museum was built for and exclusively curates the largest collection of his work – 95% of total output. See the text authored by its Principal Architect for more information. Brad Cloepfil, Clyfford Still Museum: Allied Works Architecture [N.P.: Hatje Cantz, 2013].

all its projects, the firm has established a parti: the architectural

As a contrast there is Cheever Hall designed by the

filtration and intensity of light, interweaving of circulation and

architectural firm Page-Werner in 1974 as part of a three

program, and the delicate making of interventions which

building complex on the Montana State University – Bozeman

embrace the human experience [Fig. 16].48

campus. Cheever Hall can be described as practice in brutalism, emergent from geometrical articulation of function through blunt material expression found in structural cast concrete with brick and concrete masonry.49

Figure 17: Cheever Hall corridor photograph by this author indicating enclosure of walls and cavernousness, removed from the exterior world. Figure 16: Photograph of interior hallway of the Clyfford Still Museum taken by Allied Works Architecture, 2011, www.alliedworks.com.

Similar to the Clyfford Still Museum Cheever Hall was likely designed to communicate modernity on Nineteenth Century

The analysis is based on an essay entitled, “The Anonymous Bathroom,” written by this author for a graduate course at Montana State University in the fall of 2013 under the direction of Teaching Professor of Architecture Barry Newton. The essay explored the foil relationship between the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum through spatial analysis. This then prompted questioning, ‘What are restroom spaces?’

Historian Reyner Banham describes the emergence of ‘New Brutalism’ during the mid-Twentieth Century, and largely evolves from an understanding of the emergence of aspects of the Modernist formal aesthetic: Japanese ‘peasant dwelling forms.’ See Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic [New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1966], 45-7.

Land Grant University campus. The original drawings do not

relentless white light resonating the buzz of fluorescent fixtures.

necessarily indicate technical sophistication as driver of its

The mirror is standard, if present at all.

modern presentation, but instead indicate an acute consideration of humans as occupants. This is seen in one way by the drawing of window-wall constructions responsive to solar-orientation, function and programming, and as a way to connect the interior occupants with the exterior for a more pleasurable occupation. In its final realization, however, the whole composition falls short of a pleasurable occupation.50 The building’s abridged window-wall constructions, lack of envelope technical sophistication, and cold, bleak material palate make occupation repressive and [for lack of a better term] brutal [Fig. 17]. Surprisingly, there is another similarity beyond their conceptions as modern constructions: the evacuation facilities. There are metal stalls. There are white vortex-like flush toilets. There are two urinals. There is the permanent dank stench of a public restroom – the resultant of poor ventilation. There are sinks made of white porcelain. There are smooth, hard surfaces on the floor and walls. The lighting is on the verge of harsh; a

This understanding of Cheever Hall comes from first hand-experience of occupation from 2010 to date, as well as the original building drawings submitted to the state in 1971 by project architect, Vincent Werner, an MSU Alumni, for Page-Werner.

Figure 18: Photographs of a restroom in Cheever Hall [above] taken by this author, and the restroom in the Clyfford Still Museum [below] taken by Thomas R. Wood, 2012.

For the Clyfford Still Museum, the toilet room is placeless within the precisely tuned material textures and sequence of spaces. For Cheever Hall, though, the toilet rooms are a

continuation of the overall material and spatial conditions. The

So what? Given the anatomic transcendence of evacuation

surprise is that at their core the spaces are the same. Any toilet

across all beings, shouldn’t there be standardization and ubiquity

room within the United States since the turn of the twentieth

of experience in regards to the public toilet? What hopefully is

century exists tucked away in these buildings; thin metal

and will continue to become apparent is that the trajectory of

partitions partly screening stalls; porcelain urinals hanging-out

an architecture of devices is hollow Its relentless ubiquity not

along the walls; paper towel dispensers and hand driers next to

only severely deteriorates a being’s possibility for orientation

the sinks.

within the world, but also deteriorates the potential for pleasure and delight provided by the security of orientation.

The illustrative buildings described are separated by nearly

Toilet rooms as devices are therefore in conflict with us as

forty years, hundreds of geographic miles, contextual landscape

beings and should be imperatively readdressed at their

conditions, budgetary considerations,51 and different designers

essence.52

and design traditions. The toilets, nevertheless, are the same,

and are the same because they are created as devices: objects constrained a function – however inefficient or nonanthropogenic – and thereby limited in possibility to evolve and become more than they are in physical manifestation. _ 51

The Clyfford Still Museum [CSM] is published as costing approximately $1017.54 USD per square foot in 2011. The Creative Arts Complex [CAC], three buildings including Cheever Hall, is estimated as costing $138.55 USD per square foot in 2011 dollars. The CAC is less than one-seventh of the cost per square foot of the CSM and nearly five times the square footage [28,500 versus 135,012 square feet]. Contextually, the CAC was built during a recession, post the 1973 Oil Crisis, and during double digit inflation. The CSM was built after the recession of 2008. Yet, the restrooms in both buildings are practically identical. For more on Cheever Hall and the Creative Arts Complex see Community Design Center, “School of Architecture Facility Studies” [Montana State University, 2007]. For more information on the CSM see David Hill, “Clyfford Still Museum by Allied Works Opening this Month in Denver,” Architectural Record 11 [2011].

As part of a larger framework, this imperative is associated with the latent effects of Modernism – discussed broadly in the previous section “A Historical Overview” – an architecture, such as the architecture of devices, that is rationalized by function and realized by technological production alienates beings from themselves. Disorientation and worthlessness result. For more discussion on this framework, see the works of Martin Heidegger including Being and Time [1927], “The Origin of the Work of Art” within Off the Beaten Track [1950], and “Building Dwelling Thinking” in Poetry, Language, Thought [1971]; in addition to analysis by Kenneth Frampton in “On Reading Heidegger” from Oppositions 4 [October 1974].

| PLACES OF A conversation with a bureaucrat:56 Why are public toilet rooms always the same? We quantify and classify, and reduce reality to

Because there are already figured layouts.

its ‘measurable’ aspects. . . Art is certainly taught,

Why?

but its existential basis and function are hardly

Because there are prescriptive laws.

understood . . . The general result of our present

So what?

approach is alienation from things and from our

I don’t want to get sued.

fellow men. . . man is even alienated from his own

But isn’t there flexibility within the prescription?

nature, and becomes mere ‘human material.’ 53

That’s expensive and I don’t want to invest the capital. Well, why?

The bathroom is no longer considered a

Because nobody spends any time in them.

dignifying place . . . but rather a space where

Why?

water is present and should be swiftly removed,54

Because it is culturally unacceptable to do so. Why?

The fundamental belief . . . the human body is

Because people ‘do their business’ and then leave.

ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and

No, but why?

disease . . . to avert these characteristics through

Because there is nothing else in there!

the use of the powerful influences of ritual and

Why?

ceremony.55

. . . because there are already figured layouts.

Heidegger paraphrased by Christian Norberg-Schulz, “Kahn, Heidegger and the

Language of Architecture,” in Oppositions 18, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1979, 46. 54 Marco Frascari, “The Pneumatic Bathroom,” Plumbing [New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997], 162-80. 55 Horace Minor, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema,” American Anthropologist 58.3 [1956]: 503-7.

Egress and accessibility are highly prescriptive aspects of building design. To meet code there are guidelines to follow, and to push the limits of these guidelines or address them in a different way may lead to expensive delays in permitting, lawsuits, and a myriad of other possible immediate or long-term complications. There is also possibility for the opposite, however, as exemplified by the egress stair within the Bullitt Center Building in Seattle, WA, by the Miller Hull Partnership, which promotes occupant inhabitation through providing of views and informal meeting space.

devices. The first phenomenon describes the tight This invented ‘conversation with a bureaucrat’ colloquially

morphological constraints of function for devices: toilet rooms

drives at the economic perception and cultural acceptance of

as places of bureaucracy. The second phenomenon describes

toilet rooms, given their informal status as a device. As a

the secondary, misappropriated uses forced by the constraints

standardized thing to the bureaucrat it is just a mass produced

of function for devices: toilet rooms as places of separation.

building component that can be plugged into any design. There

is no immediate stimulation for further consideration. Why

Places of Bureaucracy

expend intellectual and monetary resources on something that is already done?

Figure 20: Accessibility, ANSI A117.1 “Figure 304.3 - Size of Turning Radius”, 2003.

ANSI A117.1 as adopted by state building codes outlines the physical fixture and spatial dimensional conditions of toilets. Figure 19: Photograph of partial model by Farrell/Grimsaw Partnership for design of a bathroom tower with manufactured modules that cheaply and simply "plug-in," 1967.

This attitude has generated two phenomena which describe the contemporary restroom and our ongoing relationship to it, as stemming from the understanding of an architecture of

Specifically Chapter 6 of A117 qualifies legally acceptable toilet facilities.57 These dimensional conditions have been

The International Code Council has accepted the American National Standards Institute A117.1 standard since its research and development in the 1950s and 60s. Since the mid-1960s with the passage of US Federal Legislation such as the 1964 Civil Liberties Act, 1968 Architectural Barriers Act, and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act this standard has been dictating the lowest acceptable physical and spatial conditions for accessible public facilities. The most up-to-date version is 2003.

institutionalized as more than dimensions but as real, physical designs. What diagrams and charts like Figure 21 show is that toilet rooms are closed components; flexed by external conditions such as occupancy type, how many occupants, and other administrative numbers. Consideration is limited to examining the chart and plugging in the number of fixtures along a thick plumbing wall as required for male and female facilities. A dimensional turning radius for wheelchair accessibility then determines how close the walls and fixture partitions may be to each other [Fig. 20]. The minutia is even configured to prepackaged details. For example, between ANSI A117.1, 2003, and such publications as Time-Saver Standards for Architectural Design edited by Watson and Crosbie, there are diagrams of where to optimally place toilet paper dispensers, how high to place mirrors, and the general shapes of fixture accessories.58 These diagrams then become real constructions, and through lack of questioning or flexing beyond the functional layout become ubiquitous designs. 58

See ICC/ANSI A117.1, 2003, and graphic and material standards texts like Donald Watson and Michael J. Crosbie, ed., Time-Saver Standards for Architectural Design: Technical Data for Professional Practice [N.p.: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2005]. Both of these texts illustrate a ‘Rules of Thumb’ easy approach to designing.

Figure 21: Diagram of a typical accessible facility scheme [above, far] with a chart for parity of fixtures in relation to building type and occupant load [above, close], from The Architect's Studio Companion by Allen and Iano, 2012, 195-7.

room through its conception as a device, has therefore been Accessibility is not the issue, however. The western sociatal trajectory has made a moral imperative of equal access to

reduced to quantifiable rules of thumb institutionalized by government regulations, and perpetuated by stakeholders.

facilities, as discussed previously. The issue is that these toilet access standards have been deemed difficult to deal with by designers and constructors due to legal liability,59 and have transposed themselves into easily implemented rules of thumb. What’s more is that the rules of thumb have a back and forth relationship with manufacturers, where the diagram not only becomes the physical layout, but becomes an actual product [Fig. 22]. All together the issues surrounding legally acceptable facilities have created device-like conditions that define the physical qualities of function. Deviation from the defining standards of function [dimensional relationships, etc.] shall be for all intensive purposes considered changing the function [since there is liability for the restroom being not what it is supposed to be dimensionally]; thereby indicating the device will become either useless or something else entirely. The toilet 59

In the form of one, “a direct suit by disabled person”; two, “a direct suit by an organization representing the disabled”; three, “a direct suit by Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”)”; four, “an action by the Department of Justice as the enforcement arm for the ADA and FHA”; and/or five, “a cross-action by others who have been sued directly by one or more of the above.” For a more technical discussion of this issue related to building professionals see Jean A. Weil et al, “Disability, Accessibility & Liability: What an Architect Should Know,” [N.p.: AIA Trust, 2014].

Figure 22: ANSI A117.1 “Figure 604.5.1 - Sidewall Grab Bar for Water Closet" [above, far] and Kohler K-14561 contemporary grab bar product design [above, close].

facility, an individual may then have to choose whether it is a

Places of Separation

male or female depending on his or her presentation. Inside, the person must then choose to use a stall or a urinal [true for male or female presentation depending on fixture availability]. The level of separateness once a stall or urinal is chosen is not always total. Urinals may be separated by walls or partitions or nothing at all. Urinals may even be substituted with a linear trough, where separation from other people is not guranteed. Stalls have a similar matrix of possibilities. It comes down to a level of privacy between a person and others.

Figure 23: Monica Bonvicini's London toilet installation, Don't Miss a Sec, 2003-4. Exterior photograph taken by Jennifer Carlile, MSNBC.com, 2004, [left], and photograph of interior while exterior is being washed by Scott Barbour, Getty Images, [right].

Depending on the person’s relationship to the location of the facility – whether consistently visited or singularly visited –

A recurring theme intertwined within the toilet and toilet

there is also a level of separateness psychologically in whether

room is separateness. Central to the discussion of the toilet’s

within the individual is anonymous or is known by others. This

developmental history that persists today is the separation

situation deals with heirarchy beyond physical spatial separation

between privilege and poverty. This has been in regards to

and moves towards a sociological construction [in this line of

domestic affordability. Heirarchy exists on a multitude of levels,

examination the device restroom transforms from a screwdriver

however, beyond wealth. For example, spatial separation

to a shiv].

occurs when a person looking for a lavatory must first find the devoted corridor to this service.60 Upon finding the public 60

The emergence of the corridor occurs in the 17th century, as a method of separating private and public functionality within the home. Domesticity evolved the corridor from the Palladian plan and its togetherness, where movement through the home occurs

within the functional spaces. The corridor changed the cohesive flow of rooms into a distinction between space to move and space to function. For more discussion on this evolution see Witold Rybczynski, Home: A Short History of an Idea [New York: Viking, 1986], 56. and Jonathan Hill, Immaterial Architecture [New York: Routledge, 2006].

An architecture of devices emerges with on the one hand, the fuctional description based on dimensionality, and on the

Since the introduction of the sanitary idea in western

other hand, the misappropriation based on heirarchy indicated

culture, toilets have remained segregated by sex for decency

by three sociological constructions. These situations

purposes, but have not always been equal in number and

should be viewed in regards to Michel Foucault’s conception of

condition. Once, again, the discussion returns to code and

‘biopower’ which, “refers to the ways in which power manifests

formulaic design generation. Within Chapter 29 of the

itself in the form of daily practices and routines through which

International Building Code are the potty parity requirements.

individuals engage in self-surveillance, self-discipline, and thereby

And these potty parity requirements have been adopted by local

subjugate themselves.”61 Viewing these situations through

and state jurisdications along with requirements for such things

Foucault illustrates why toilet rooms developed and continue to

as what constitutes structural concrete.64

maintain their current trajectory. Potty parity codes are accordingly institutionalized within

_ Introduce the word ‘segregation’ into a discussion and

society. Institutionalization of these codes reduces ‘men’ and

questions of equity arise, likely stemming from the racial idea of

‘women’ to one sex-category or the other. This pigeonholing

‘separate but equal’ in the United States.62 In the case of the

has many implications surrounding repression of people; namely

toilet as it is known today, sex-segregation occurs in regards to

by oversimplifying someone to one category or the other there

privacy: male toilets or female toilets.63 Unwittingly, the

is no further distinction. Such issues as messy people versus

segregation of sexes creates a repressive situation.

tidy people, sex of children versus the parent, the sex of disability attendants versus their disabled charge, breast-feeding

Jen Pylypa, “Power and Bodily Practice: Applying the Work of Foucault to an Anthropology of the Body,” Arizona Anthropologist 13 [1998], 21. 62 See the landmark US Supreme Court case affirming state-sponsored segregation of public facilities, Plessy v. Ferguson 1896, and later overturned during the mid-twentieth century in the United States. 63 As with racial segregation of the past, contemporary trends in cultural acceptance of LGBTQ persons have started to rattle the foundations of sex-segregated toilets. This is in regards to transsexual persons who present as one sex [presentation of a gender], but were born as a different sex. See Doe v. Clenchy 2014 from the Maine Supreme Court. Part of these trends is the idea that gender is a social construction not limited

by sex because sex can be physically [re]constructed. See Christine Overall, “Public Toilets: Sex Segregation Revisited,” Ethics and the Environment 12.2 [Fall, 2007], 71-91. 64 The formulas do fluctuate from the typical 2:1 female-male based on occupancy, but segregation of sex is maintained. See the International Building Code [International Code Council, 2014]. Public facilities are the responsibility of two governmental organizations within the United States: the US Department of Labor within OSHA regulations and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

women, and so forth are not considered.65 What’s more is that

social and spatial privacy within a building, toilet rooms become

in regards to time, woman are at a disadvantage in satellite

locations where otherwise deemed not-normal behavior finds a

experiences outside the women’s room because typical usage

home.

by female users is twice as long as the typical male user.66 These issues which may be important to a person’s existence

These facilities become perfect locations for this behavior

are unjustly dismissed.

because they are not-a-place places, blackholes, if you will,

where an individual’s existence cannot be measured against society’s preconceptions. Sexual activity constitutes an aspect of this characterization. For example, conservative societies, such as the United States up until the mid-twentieth century,67 forced same-sex activity into public toilets.68 Within a person is shielded from judgment and castigation in order to address innate instincts critical to his or her being. Conceptions surrounding nudity and shame also feed into deviancy. In one sense there are expectations and paranoia

Figure 24: The two far right toilet stalls within a Minneapolis Airport facility become nationally notorious when US Senator Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in 2007. Photograph from blogs.kansascity.com.

Separation has also generated a situation of deviancy within lavatory facilities. Deviancy can be defined by the societal categorization of something as ‘normal’ where everything else outside is ‘deviant.’ Given there is supposed to be a level of 65

Overall, 12.2 [2007], 71-91. Harvey Molotch, “The Rest Room and Equal Opportunity,” Sociological Forum 3.1 [1998], 128-32.

surrounding exhibitionism and voyeurism that would be occluded outside of the toilet room. In another sense there is heightened awareness of a being’s own body and bodily processes which results in self-consciousness. For example an awareness of physical noises [such as a release of gas through 67

The sexual revolution of the 1950s which generated the concept of the Living Bath [See Penner, [2013], 187-91] also initiated changing attitudes towards the LGBTQ community. For more information search the Stonewall Riots, NYC, 1969. 68 See Overall, 12.2 [2007], 87, and for an informal narrative see David Sedaris, “Loggerheads”, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls [New York: Back Bay Books: 2014].

the anus] or an awknowledgement of anatomy and physiology [such as the extrication of the penis from clothing for urination or the disposal of a soiled tampon] forces a questioning of the self in regards to dirtiness of the body or awareness that a normal man or woman in public is not supposed to demonstrate. 69 _ Finally, there is a subtext of confusion within toilet facilities. Three elements are in relation a being’s confusion: posture,

Figure 25: Squat analysis diagrams from Alexander Kira's The Bathroom, 1976, page 126-7, indicating morphological changes to the toilet based on the more natural squat evacuation [right] versus the sitting evacuation [left].

touch, and environmental connection. All three of these emerge out of the western toilet’s morphological and functional development in relation to the body.

Additionally, the western toilet facility requires the touch of surfaces by a person’s skin. A touch to enter the room; a touch to the seat of the toilet and flushing mechanism; a touch of the

Physiologically, evacuation occurs more naturally through a

sink to wash; a touch to leave the room. There is an aversion

squating posture rather than a sitting posture. Alexander Kira

to this touch, however, for fear and disgust of disease and all

in the text, The Bathroom, studies this topic in regards to all the

around contact with someone else’s bodily fluids. A powerful,

fixtures of the public and private lavatory. Kira’s extensive

metaphysical quality exists in regards to touch, though. Touch

empirical studies derive new morphological characteristics for

allows recognition of ourselves by others; it registers our

the toilet, sink, stalls, and so forth.70

presence and our existence as living, sensual beings.

Charles M. Vivona and Merrille Gomillion, “Situational Morality of Bathroom Nudity,” The Journal of Sex Research 8.2 [1972], 133. 70 Kira also reviews the societal issues surrounding the toilet and toilet facilities. The research’s graphic analysis provides a new perspective on how evacuation should occur. See Alexander Kira, The Bathroom [New York: The Viking Press, 1976]. Kira is not the only researcher to delve into this topic. This is part of the era of the egalitarian toilet, which involved re-envisioning of many aspects of bathroom design. See Buckminster Fuller’s ‘Dymaxion House’ research; Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, and Charlotte Perriand ‘Sanitary Cabin;’ and Herman Miller’s ‘MetaForm’ project.

‘Flush-and-forget’ also plays a role in the subtext of confusion. Evacuations are perceived as simply disappearing, hydraulically removed to oblivion by the toilet, “discrete

objects, free of context or the reality of use.” 71 This is given

Moreover, these conditions present the essence of toilet

that there is no major connection between the evacuation, the

rooms. This essense is fundamentally about the room being a

actual disposal of the evacuation, and the human who evacuated.

space not acutely responsive to its intended usage. Yes, the toilet is a space to evacuate, but it misses the whole point of

These three elements imply a separation between humans

evacuation: the relief. Evacuation is necessary to relieve

and the fixtures that are supposed to accommodate them.72

pressures resulting from digestion and the other self-

What are the implications of having to use something that does

maintenance processes of the body.

not truly fit? What are the implications of not being able to How can a self-perpetuating architecture of devices with

touch or be touched? What are the implications of not understanding consequences associated with an individual action

nearly five hundred years of history embedded in society’s

or collective actions? The resultant is confusion by dislocation

culture memory be readdressed? What is required is not a

from one’s own being.

superficial shift through new technology or a complete

departure from the familiar fixtures.73 What is required is Together places of bureaucracy and places of separateness

prodding of the societal trajectory to initiate a gradual shift in

describe the conditions of the contemporary toilet room.

the perception of what a rest-room might be.

Places of bureaucracy provides a quantitative description of the

space, while places of separateness provides a qualitative description of the space. Each presents itself as selfperpetuating based on institutionalization by both government and sociological normalization of practice and habits. 71

Penner [2013], 9. These issues of confusion have been addressed in a variety of ways with technologies such as composting toilets and self-cleaning toilet seats, and designs such as Kira’s that accommodate physiology more naturally. Overall adoption has not occurred, however, quite possibly from too simplistically treating the issue or too great a change in familiarity.

This was part of the failings of Modernism as the movement initiated a ‘Crisis of Meaning’ due to a lack of intelligibility from a complete shift to an architecture as a realization of technology. See Kate Nesbitt, Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, [New York: Princeton Architectural Press,1996], 16-70, for a more in depth discussion of the ‘Crisis of Meaning’ in relation to the larger trajectory of architecture.

| TOWARDS A RESTROOM ARCHITECTURE What are these places? the socially conscious have been suspicious of the slightest trace of hedonism in architectural endeavors and have rejected it,74

What has been determined is the toilet room is more than simply a space with a toilet. The toilet exists within a space built on the limits of control. From Francois’s edicts to ANSI A117.1, from shame to dislocation, the toilet room pokes,

of all the elements of Japanese architecture, the

prods, and corrals humans into complacent submission not

toilet is the most aesthetic. Our forebears, making

directly, but dispersed within society.77 The room can thus be

poetry . . . transformed what by rights should be

regarded as one manifestation of our collective being within the

the most unsanitary room in the house into a place

world that describes us as self-subjugating, discriminating,

of unsurpassed elegance, replete with fond

homogenizing entities.

associations with the beauties of nature.75 But this characterization by no means encompasses the A building that is designed slowly and envisioned

entirety of public toilets. It merely provides a bounded view

specifically for its situation . . . can deepen our

based on a particular angle of inquiry; just as the iris focuses

sense of being here. . . The user inhabits such a

light for vision, this inquiry is a particular focus. Given this

building and over time comes to regard it as

bounded view there is the possibility to ask, “What might these

another layer of himself, revealing or adorning its

places be? The following are a set of cultural and intellectual

detail and substance, apologising for its patina or

precedents that return to the nature, the essence, of

wearing its changes proudly.76

evacuation: relief. _

Bernard Tschumi, “The Pleasure of Architecture,” [1978]. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows [Connecticut: Leete’s Island Books, 1977], 4. 76 Brian O’Brien, “Slow Architecture: Linger, Savour, Touch,” Building Material 12 [2004], 19. 75

Pylypa [1998], 21.

Restroom World

and performer] behind the emphemera and life of the space.79

Madison, Wisconsin

What developed is a synergy of the human altered environment

“Carol”, Curator/Performer

expressing a shared physical comfort, desire for togetherness, and non-consumerist ethos, where interpersonal connections80

On a nondescript floor on the campus of the University of

are valued above prosthetic relationships.

Wisconsin – Madison, there is a women’s restroom tucked Ideas of relief come into play with Restroom World in

away. The restroom has a singular accessible stall with a toilet, sink, access to natural light, and a vast square footage. It is

regards to it being a world within a world; not separate, but

cleaned daily by custodial staff. Intriguingly, though, over a

part of a whole. It has its own identity specific to its location

period of a few months it transformed into so much more than

and irreplicable phenomena, as well as a considerable care in its

its common description allows. From mundane to alive, the

construction and maintenance.81 Together this generated a high

toilet room became something else entirely through first, the

quality of experience and dynamic environment based on a

addition of an eclectic couch, then some miscellaneous bits and

mutual trust for perpetuity.82 This retreat provided not only

pieces, and then the active presence of people.

the physical relief associated with a safe place for evacuation, but the physical relief of being together.

This transformation emerged out of the creation of a space that embodies the power of intimacy.78 Intimacy emerged from the participatory curation of minor exhibits and vignettes that presented a female aura within a culture of trust and collective experience of the occupants. Key to its success as a place instead of just another restroom was the underlying sense of care and comfort from an individual person [the main curator

For a thorough study of this case phenomena see Beverly Gordon, “Embodiment, Community Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in ‘Restroom World,’ a Backstage Women’s Space,” 116.462 [2003], 452.

Gordon [2003], 456. Ibid, 452-9. 81 See the ‘Philosophical Position’ and the discussion of Catherine Dee and Michael Benedikt. What is illustrated here are Benedikt’s qualities of presence, significance, and emptiness, and Dee’s evergreen time. 82 This type of situation is described by Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, [New York: Random House, 1961], via the discussion of how cities handle strangers: a clear demarcation of public and private, eyes of the street by its natural proprietors, and recurrent use. Michel Foucault also discusses this by positing that conformity occurs through desire to remain normal and not deviant, which perpetuates itself voluntarily. See Pylypa [1998], 23-4. 80

Figure 26: Restroom World image from 1998 showing qualities of the space. It was appropriated from its mundane, ubiquitous prior existence. Taken by Beverly Gordon from "Embodiment, Community Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in 'Restroom World,' a Backstage Women's Space," [2003].

Figure 27: Restroom World image of novelty ephemera which was one aspect of the physical presence of the space as an embodiment of beings and of having an identity of its own. Taken by Beverly Gordon from "Embodiment, Community Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in ‘Restroom World,’ a Backstage Women’s Space,” [2003].

Trenton Jewish Community Center Bath House

free from partitions, taken up by a series of slight, wooden

Trenton, New Jersey

benches and open showers heads set in rows along the

Louis Kahn, architect; Anne Tyng, collaborating architect

enclosing walls. The middle is free, slightly sloping to the center drain, and immediately above is an occulus. The heaviness of

I discovered that certain spaces are very

the enveloping concrete planes is countered by the wooden

unimportant and some spaces are the real raison

roof which delicately touches upon the massive columns at the

d’être for doing what you’re doing. But the small

points of the square spaces. The edges of the roof do not come

spaces were contributing to the strength of the

down to the walls by ending a few feet before, which leaves a

larger spaces. They were serving

them.83

illuminating plane of sky.84

Arising from the earth the concrete block spaces present

Returning to the central court, the sunlight casts lucid,

themselves as monumental geometries without ostentation, like

shifting shadows from the surrouding structure. The pathways

an immutable rock outcropping. Entry into the central

to the other spaces are not direct. Instead movement is

courtyard is not readily apparent. Simple breaks articulated by

regulated by a circular pebble garden [another nod to historical

an ebbing darkness of shadow in the sequence of walls shows

tradition via parikrama in South Asian cosmology]. Beyond the

recesses into the central courtyard; a contemporary

central court there is another square appendage with a short

architectural study in chiaroscuro. An abstract composition of

set of stairs opening-up to the exterior and to the pool.

two dimensional planes evoking fluid motion but solid form marks the entries, and gives a sensual introduction of the place.

Kahn and Tyng’s bath house became so much more than it was conceived as originally. The initial plans called for the

From the central, en plaine air court there are more planar recesses to travel between flanking right and left. The recesses drive the occupant into the changing rooms. The interior is

Interview with John Peter, Philadelphia, 1961, in The Oral History of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century.

tradiational thick plumbing wall separating two sex-specific 84

Around the same time period was the Barton Springs Bath House in Austin, Texas, 1947. Designed by Dan Driscoll, it provides the same heavy enclosures opening upon incredible ‘sky spaces’ [to borrow James Turrell’s terminology]. Key to the experience is the en pleine air showers and changing spaces; freeing, sheltering, naturally dynamic. See Austin Parks and Recreation Department, “Master Plan: the Bathhouse,” [2009].

rooms driven by a collection of functional spaces for disrobing, storing, showering, and evacuating.85 The realized spatial qualities, though, pushed everything together and dissolved the busyness of the partitions. It did not create an entirely open plan,86 but a clear sequence of conditions separated by transitional pacing elements. The transitional pacing elements are described by Kahn as an, “offering,”87 from the architecture, citing them as wonderfully “unnecessary.”88 These spatial elements have the effect of slowing the occupant down. 89 More so these elements provide a spatial relief. A relief from the sun; a relief from the

Figure 28: Nearly finalized plan for bath house. From the Kahn Collection.

everyday-life-world; a relief from the ordinary. The relief is clarifying, not mind-numbing. It is a relief about being there, right there, and subtly experiencing the connectivity between the environment and the place and the people who occupy it. 85

See process drawings from the Kahn Collection for the development of the design. www.philadelphiabuildings.org. 86 Realizing the severe limitations provided by the ‘open plan’ strived for by modernists and pitiless within the International style, Kahn pushed back for an architecture of caverns, of shelter. See Sarah Williams Goldhagen, Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism [Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001], 199-214. 87

Specifically in regard to the porches on the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. See Nell E. Johnson, Light is the Theme: Louis I. Kahn and the Kimbell Art Museum [N.P.: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1975], 28. 88 Ibid, 28. 89 See the ‘Philosophical Position’ and the discussion of Catherine Dee and Michael Benedikt. What is illustrated here are Benedikt’s qualities of presence, significance, materiality, and emptiness, and Dee’s evergreen time.

Figure 29: Central courtyard. Note the materiality, lifting of the roof off the walls, and central pebble garden providing circumambulation, ca 1950s. kahntrentonbathhouse.org.

_ 51

Technology as Savior

universe non-physically in the form of the internet and wave

Western Culture

energy to people and machines. Together each of these instances shows that what is here today will be something else

The man who changed the face of America had a

entirely tomorrow. Interestingly, the concept will remain the

gizmo, a gadget, a gimmick – in his hand, in his

same, communication, but the means will be different than

back pocket, across his saddle, on his hip, in the

anything we can imagine.

trailer, round his neck, on his head, deep in a hardened silo.90

It is therefore uncertain to link an argument for the quality of the environment to technology. From the wheel to

Paritally lacking within the previous interrogation of the

hyrdoponics on the International Space Station, nothing is

restroom is a serious investigation of restroom technology.

definite between them except transportation. Human beings

Toilet. Sink. Partition. Lock, stock, and two smoking barrels.

will be using their ability to conceive and develop and build in

The answer is, “No.” No, technology is not an adequate

order to create new ways of existing within the world.

element to analyze, as technology is always changing, evolving,

Technology in this world is hence a given. Human beings will

progressing, mutating. It is not something secure or grounding.

have to be aware, however, of the consequences of technology.

Informally as an example, there is virtual communication.

William Cronon writes,

400 years ago there were hand written letters between people.

No less important was the powerful romantic

200 years ago telegraphs transmitted electric codes between

attaction of primitivism . . . – the belief that the best

people. 50 years ago real-time audio and visual transmissions

antidote to the ills of an overly refined and civilized

communicated messages between people. And today, the

modern world was a return to simpler, more

sharing of information occurs instantaneously across the

primative living,91

Nigil Whiteley, Reyner Bahham: Historian of the Immediate Future, [N.p.: The MIT Press, 2003], 210.

William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature [N.p. W.W. Norton & Company, 1995].

Cronon reveals the other extreme, nostalgia and glazed longing,

and the world that can adequately be described as prosthetic.94

with the false reliability of rejecting technology and

Mediation of experience exisits, in a contemporary sense, from

advancement. Here we are stuck between a rock and a hard

pervasive photography, to digital second lives and social media,

place. To a large degree technology, as indicated by the

to sexual fetishization of objects, to ‘reality’ television. Each

Whitely position, allows us as a world culture to move forward

piece acts as a “middle man” between ourselves and

and be something different than we were today.92 Implicit in his

experiencing the world.

critique, however, is a senseless reliance on technology. What is our world if it is built on ephemeral manifestations of ideas?

Again, though, return to Cronon: reductionism is not the

Cronon, counters this implicit position through critizing the

way to address technology. Reductionsim is retreat, and

varnished reflection upon simpler times.

counters the experience of the world. Technology is a secondary enhancement to already conceived positions, ideas,

Sarah Williams Goldhagen writes on Modernism and Louis I. Kahn,

or qualities. In regards to an architecture of relief, technology might provide methods of connecting human beings with their

The determinative feature of his [Kahn’s]

environment. For example, composting toilets. As previously

generation’s culture would be not the promise of

discussed, hydraulic toilets are confusing. Hydraulic toilets

industrial technology but the integral and destructive

anonymously carry away waste for disposal ‘out of sight, out of

linkage of mid-century capitalism with mass

mind,’ never to be seen again. Composting toilets, though,

consumption and suburbanization,93

engage a cycle: what once was, is now something else, which

Technology results in a detrimental distancing from both

will again be what it once was before. Relief, consequently, then

ourselves and from our world.

comes in the form of security and stability by knowing this

Technology [gizmos, gadgets,

and gimmicks] has generated a relationship between ourselves

cycle.

In fact this is the position of Modernism. Technology will deliver us; technology is the end game; architecture is at its highest conception the use of technology. This is a false prophecy because it is hollow, and without corporal feeling; it is society as a process of mechanization, production, and profit. See Frampton, [1974]. See Garnham, [2013]. 93 Goldhagen [2001], 201.

Penner [2013], 179.

Figure 30: Dry composting toilet illustrating the cyclical effect from agricultural product to table to toilet to agriculture. catorcekt.files.wordpress.com.

opposed to

Figure 31: Kohler's NuMi automated toilet with retractable bidet head, foot warmer, night light, and other features. static0.therichestimages.com.

Figure 32: Changes in toilet technology [top to bottom]: George Jennings hydraulic WC, ca 1851, Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion WC, ca 1930; and toilet of the future, ca 2014.

_ 54Â Â

An architecture of relief by the focus previously enumerated

dance for us, and grab our attention. The building goes beyond

upon provides tendrils to explore. Within the three precedent

its constituent pedestrian pieces. It becomes something more

studies there is a possible socio-cultural understanding of

to focus our perception of the immediate environmental

restrooms based on the micro-phenomenon of Restroom

context. Without judgment towards us, the Bath House

World. There is also a possible spatial understanding based on

welcomes our occupation, saying, “touch me; move through me;

the experiential occupation of Louis Kahn’s Trenton Bath

live for a moment with me.”

House. And finally there is a possible technological understanding based on humanity’s complex and conflicting

Technology then can either destroy this focus or reinforce

relationship with gadgetry. ‘Possible’ is the key term, as these

it. It can accommodate our dynamic states through enhancing

precedents explore the out of the ordinary restroom.

our perception of the world. But it can also disconnect us by eliminating real perception.

Relief at its essence is well-being based on being grounded

within the world. This does not mean an incessant, nauseating feeling of happiness. Relief means something more holistic that encompasses sadness and stress along with pleasure and respite. When we reach the point of crying, does it not provide some relief, some physical and emotional pleasure? Restroom World describes a space to retire from the everyday world. Its aliveness provides an embrace to those who choose to participate in its theater; in its zone of connectivity. The embrace can be taken even further through Louis Kahn’s Trenton Bath House. The Bath House acts as a backdrop for the natural environment to play with us, and

| INITIAL CONCLUSIONS At its root the toilet tells us something that if an outside entity examined our society would conclude: humans do not In our context that means to study the language of

acknowledge their own biology. Yakov Dzhugashvili would not

architecture and to learn how to let it ‘speak.’

acknowledge his relationship to his shit. We are all Yakov,

When we in this way reinstate architecture as an

though. We are all at a point – as closeted by indeterminate

art, we may reach beyond the superficial

and disperse social forces – unaccepting of our shit and its

quantification of functionalism and the arbitrary

circumstances. Yet, it is transcendent of all things from stars in

codification of semiology, and make our places

the sky to worms in the dirt, whether in regard to

become alive.95

thermodynamics or metabolism, there is just a passing of energy. _ The human relationship with the toilet room is complicated. It straddles and rides the culturally-taboo subject of evacuation within the West. The toilet is an effective method to guard against fecal-born disease, while it is not responsive to our being within this world. It has evolved into a space separate from the architecture it exists within, and controlled by formula rather than by design ethics. And finally, it has become based on economical function rather than human accommodation. Given its five-hundred years of history the toilet room has become embedded within our societal trajectory; its space and

Norberg-Schulz [1979], 46.

treatment and occupation is familiar, maybe too familiar. The

imperative is thus to re-examine, through a design sensibility, the true nature of what the space might provide for the occupant. This is the architecture of the restroom: experience based articulation within a specific location that recognizes the occupants as responsive, perceiving, imagining, unique entities. _ There is a pleasure in sitting in the sun as it streams through the window on a winter day. It cannot be quantified, or if it could it would destroy the very essence of what it is to sit in the radiance of the sun. A similar phenomenon occurs in regards to the pleasure of eating. Not only are there the secondary events associated with eating such as social events that bring individuals together, but eating responds to innate ying and yang urges. There is the satisfaction for the stomach which desires sustenance; there is satisfaction for the tongue and the mouth which desire taste and fill.

Satisfaction – relief

more so – can also come from knowing and anticipating the food’s eventual departure. _

| BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dee, Catherine. To Design Landscape: Art, Nature and Utility. New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Austin Parks and Recreation Department. “Master Plan: the Bathhouse.” 2009. Banham, Reyner. The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1966. Print. Benedikt, Michael. “Less for Less Yet: On Architecture’s Value[s] in the Marketplace.” Harvard Design Magazine 7 [1999]. Benedikt, Michael. For an Architecture of Reality. New York: Lumen Books, 1987. Print. Cloepfil, Brad. Clyfford Still Museum: Allied Works Architecture. N.P.: Hatje Cantz, 2013. Print. Cronon, William. Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature. N.p. W.W. Norton & Company, 1995. Web. 2014. Corroto, Carla. "The Politics of Masculinity and Sacred Space." Journal of Architectural Education 55.2 (2001): 113 17.JSTOR. Web. 2014.

Franklin, Benjamin. Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy. 13 November 1789. Web. 2014. Frascari, Marco. “The Pneumatic Bathroom.” Plumbing: Sounding Modern Architecture. ed. Nadir Lahiji and DS Friedman. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. Print. Foucault, Michel. trans. Robert Hurley. The History of the Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Print. Gardener, John. On Moral Fiction. New York: Basic, 1978. Garnham, Trevor. Architecture Re-Assembled. Oxford: Routledge, 2013. Print. Guillerme, Andre E. The Age of Water. N.p.: Texas A&M University Press, 1988. Print. Goldhagen, Sarah Williams. Louis Kahn’s Situated Modernism. Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2001. Print. Gordon, Beverly. “Embodiment, Community Building, and Aesthetic Saturation in ‘Restroom World,’ a Backstage

Women’s Space.” The Journal of American Folklore 116.462. 2003. JSTOR. Web. 2014.

Jenkins, Joseph. The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure. 3rd ed. Grove City: Joseph Jenikins, Inc., 2005. Print.

Harvey, David. “Possible Urban World.” The Fourth MegaCities Lecture. 2000. Print. Hill, David. “Clyfford Still Museum by Allied Works Opening this Month in Denver.” Architectural Record 11 . 2011. Web. 2014.

Johnson, Nell E. Light is the Theme: Louis I. Kahn and the Kimbell Art Museum. N.P.: Kimbell Art Foundation, 1975. Print. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. Print. Kira, Alexander. The Bathroom. New York: The Viking Press,

Hill, Jonathan. Immaterial Architecture. New York: Routledge,

1976. Print.

2006. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Hugo, Victor. Les Miserables [Np: Penguin Classics, 1982]. Print. Illich, Ivan. H2O and the Waters of Forget-fulness. New York: Marion Boyars, 1986. Print.

Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1984. Print. LaPorte, Dominique. trans. Nadia Benabid and Rodolphe el Khoury, History of Shit. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000. Print.

International Building Code [International Code Council, 2014]. Print.

Le Corbusier. Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning. 1930. trans. Edith Schreiber Aujame.

Interview with John Peter, Philadelphia, 1961, in The Oral History

Cambridge, MA, 1991. Print.

of Modern Architecture: Interviews with the Greatest Architects of the Twentieth Century.

Minor, Horace. “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.” American Anthropologist 58.3. 1956. Print. 59

Pylypa, Jen. “Power and Bodily Practice: Applying the Work of Molotch, Harvey. “The Rest Room and Equal Opportunity.” Sociological Forum 3.1. 1998. JSTOR. Web. 2014. Nesbitt, Kate. Theorizing a New Agenda For Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-1995. New York:

Foucault to an Anthropology of the Body,” Arizona Anthropologist 13. 1998. JSTOR. Web. 2014. Rybczynski, Witold. Home: A Short History of an Idea. New York: Viking, 1986. Print.

Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Print. Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Existence, Space, & Architecture. Praeger, 1971. Print. Norberg-Schulz, Christian. “Kahn, Heidegger and the Language

Sedaris, David. “Loggerheads”, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. New York: Back Bay Books: 2014. Print. ‘Slavoj Žižek on Toilets and Ideology’, www.youtube.com, 2012.

of Architecture.” Oppositions 18. Cambridge: The MIT Press. 1979. Print.

Tschumi, Bernard. "Introduction: Notes Towards a Theory of Architectural Disjunction." Theorizing a New Agenda

O’Brien, Brian. “Slow Architecture: Linger, Savour, Touch.” Building Material 12. 2004. JSTOR. Web. 2014. Overall, Christine. “Public Toilets: Sex Segregation Revisited.” Ethics and the Environment 12.2. Fall, 2007. JSTOR. Web. 2014.

For Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965 1995. Ed. Kate Nesbitt. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. 169-72. Print. Tschumi, Bernard. "The Pleasure of Architecture." Theorizing a New Agenda For Architecture: An Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-1995. Ed. Kate Nesbitt. New York:

Penner, Barbara. Bathroom. London: Reaktion Books, ltd, 2013. Print.

Princeton Architectural Press, 1996. Print. Tanizaki, Jun’ichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Connecticut: Leete’s Island Books, 1977. Print.

Tombesi, Paolo, and Martel, Andrew. “Vessels of Expression and Flows of Innovation.” Journal of Architectural Education 59.2. 2005. JSTOR. Web. 2014. Vivona, Charles M., and Gomillion, Merrille. “Situational Morality of Bathroom Nudity,” The Journal of Sex Research 8.2. [1972]. Print. Watson, Donald, and Crosbie, Michael J., ed. Time-Saver Standards for Architectural Design: Technical Data for Professional Practice. N.p.: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2005. Print. Weil et al. “Disability, Accessibility & Liability: What an Architect Should Know.” N.p.: AIA Trust, 2014. Web. 2014. Whiteley, Nigil. Reyner Bahham: Historian of the Immediate Future. N.p.: The MIT Press, 2003. 210. Print. Wright, Lawrence. Clean and Decent. New York: The Viking Press, 1960. Print.

| APPENDIX A

Spring 2015 General Schedule

Important Dates: January 19 to 23 – Committee Meeting February 15 to 19 – Modernism Week March 9 to 13 – Committee Meeting April 6 to 10 – Committee Meeting [as needed] May 4 to 8 – Committee Meeting [presentation]

Project Directive

A restroom architecture is an architecture of relief, not an architecture of devices. What has been posited is that there are elements of design based on an architecture of devices that are formulaic, and there are negative implications of this rigidity. With this knowledge there can now be a journey of discovery to explore the overlooked possibilities of design within these elements. The journey of discovery will include a series of exercises which will drive at one, the possibilities within the built environment, two, the actual way humans occupy space and use technology, and three, the feedback of one into the other by expanding beyond the restroom to other programs. What interests me at the essence of this analysis is exploring the mundane; the everyday. This is the world in which we exist. This is not the self-indulgent fantasy world of Bilbao or other consumable buildings. _

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Exercise A-1: Towards a Restroom Architecture Explore what a rest area or rest stop might be, based on regulatory constraints, for a highway/rural condition. This may feedback into Exercise B-1 and B-2. Site: I-10 between Palm Springs and Los Angeles, California [See ‘APPENDIX B’] Program: Traveler facilities including restrooms, travel information, telephones; maintenance facilities; and a third program like a truck weigh-station. This is based on the Federal Highway Administration Chapter 27 “Highway Rest Areas and Roadside Parking Areas” last updated September 1, 2010. Relevant codes and standards are listed in section 27.2.11. Problem Seeking: Through the Project Development Manual and other listed FHWA documents, determine a site and the quantifiable program. See William M. Peña and Steven A. Parshall, “Problem Seeking: An Architectural Programming Primer,” [2013]. Design: Within the functional constraints, explore ideas surrounding relief in the context of users, site and so forth. Deliverables: TBD based on what conditions unfold.

Figure 33: Prescriptive Schematic, Exhibit 27-2 Schematic Building Floor Plan, from "Highway Rest Areas and Roadside Parking Areas," 2010.

Exercise B-1: Socio-Cultural Articulation In the tradition of StoryCorps cataloging American oral history, explore how restrooms are occupied day to day. This may feedback into Exercise A-1. Site: Montana State University Campus, Cheever Hall [as built drawings have been acquired from the 2013 renovation]. Staging: Develop a series of prompts that may include questions or diagrams that can record movement, decision making, qualities of feeling, and so forth when people use the restroom. Determine appropriate populations.

Figure 34: Increasing Disorder In a Dining Table by Sarah Wigglesworth and Jeremy Till that traces the occupation of a dining table from its typical to its realized state, 2009.

Collection: Utilize the prompts with participants to collect experiential data. Processing: Analyze data for designing installation. Exercise B-2: Socio-Cultural Exploration Create an installation in the public restroom in Cheever Hall. This may feedback into Exercise A-1. Deliverables: TBD based on what conditions unfold.

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Field Trip: Modernism Week “The mission of Modernism Week is to celebrate and foster appreciation of mid-century architecture and design, as well as contemporary thinking in these fields, by encouraging education, preservation and sustainable modern living as represented in Palm Springs.” Itinerary: TBD by 12 December 2014, based on budgetary considerations. Tickets and tours will be based on conceptual connections to previous research. Additionally, one day will be set aside for a “Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles” –esq daytrip to LA. This may include a miniature design exercise to explore what a public convenience might be in an urban condition [Exercise A-2]. See Department of Parks and Recreation Planning Development Agency, County of Los Angeles, “Park Design Guidelines and Standards,” [2014]. This will include a visit to the selected site for Exercise A-1. Deliverables: TBD based on what conditions unfold.

Figure 35: Prescriptive design, Exhibit 4: Preferred Restroom Building Layout Diagram [minimum 2 stalls], in "Park Design Guildelines and Standards", 2014.

Exercise Analysis and Reflection 1 Portfolio/Thesis Text Break from design work to absorb the implications of the exploration exercises. This will be a respite to one, work on continuing this text through writing and images; two, determine a project typology informed by discoveries made in the first exercises and based on the project directive; and three, address academic portfolio, professional enclosures, and investigate future professional positions post-graduation. _ Exercise C: Inter-Architecture Situational Exploration Exercise Analysis and Reflection I determined project typology informed by discoveries made in first exercises. This may include multiple projects or a singular project, likely outside of the restroom, addressing possibilities within formulaic elements. _ Exercise Analysis and Reflection 2 Portfolio/Thesis Text Break from design work to absorb the implications of the exercises for the final presentation. This will be a respite to one, work on continuing this text through writing and images; and two, address academic portfolio, professional enclosures, and investigate future professional positions post-graduation. _

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| APPENDIX B CALTRANS is examining reopening the site to service east and west-bound traffic with additional programmatic elements Site: Wildwood Safety Roadside Rest Area

that have become increasing integrated into interstate rest areas

I-10 between Palm Springs and Los Angeles, California

nationwide. These programmatic elements include a truck weigh station and state police offices. CALTRANS sees

History: Closed and demolished in 2010 due to budget cuts

potential in this site for re-examining the rest area typology.

within the state of California,96 this rest area was the only one

Restrictions such as lack of modern municipal utilities and

between the 111 mile stretch between Los Angeles and Palm

adjacent natural arroyo are pushing CALTRANS to investigate

Springs, California. It serviced the east-bound traffic out of Los

environmentally conscious and economically self-sustaining

Angeles.

design solutions embedded within the infrastructure. _

Interstate Highway 10 is frequented by long-haul truck

What does it mean to drive through a desert landscape, held

drivers from the east coast of the United States, and from the

captive in a vehicle to the machinations of intense solar radiation, and

major regional metropolitan areas like Tucson and Phoenix.

come across an oasis?

Agricultural products from the Imperial Valley south of Palm Springs travel this route as well. This interstate is also the main

What does it mean to stop and “stretch my legs?”

route for both locals and tourists moving in between Arizona and Los Angeles, and between Palm Springs and Los Angeles along the coast. Yucaipa and Calimesa are more than a mile from the rest area off the interstate, which does not cater to truckers or private vehicles.

Scott Weber, “Budget Woes Force Closure of Highway Rest Areas,” NBC Los Angeles [Thursday, September 23, 2010], www.nbclosangeles.com.

What does it mean to have a collection of experiences of the body associated with the phenomena of ‘pulling-off’ the road?

Aura: Colors and atmospheric effects like these are still to be seen in the deserts, even in the parts that have been so seemingly altered by the works of men.97 the desert has done to me what it has done to many of us desert freaks – it has made me ask questions about myself that I would never otherwise have asked. . . I have not done what one has been supposed to do in deserts ever since the time of Moses – I have not ‘found myself.’ If anything I

Figure 36: Photograph by this author in the California desert, 2014.

have lost myself, in the sense that I now feel that I understand myself less than I did before.98 In the vacant luminosity of the arid desert, is a metaphysical emptiness of immeasurable dimension . . . gestures by humankind . . . to sound-out the void . . . manifesting entire cosmography across myriad of scales,99

Reyner Banham, Desert Cantos, [Albuquerque: The University of New Mexico Press, 1987], 3. 98 Reyner Banham, Scenes in America Deserta [Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Book, 1982], 228. 99 James Corner and Alex MacLean, Taking Measure Across the American Landscape, [Yale University Press, 1998], 149.

Figure 37: Texture Detail of Michael Heizer's Double Negative excavated in 1969, Photograph by this author, 2014.

Site Context:

Figure 38: Regional site context between Palm Springs and Los Angeles, CA.

Figure 40: Site plan indicating extent of previous construction, CALTRANS land, and BLM land.

Figure 39: Aerial perspective of demolished site, adjacent land, and natural arroyo.

Figure 41: Wildwood SRRA signage photograhed by NBC Los Angeles, 2010.

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Climatic Data: Climate Consultant, California Climate Zone 10

Figure 43: Annual Avg. Wind Direction.

Figure 42: Average Monthly Temperatures, High-Low.

Figure 44: Psychometric Chart with Design Comfort Standards.

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Figure 45: Sun Angles by Month, Psychometric Data.

Figure 46: Btu/sq.ft per hour of Solar Radiation.

Figure 47: Climate Consultant Sustainable Design Considerations Based on Maximizing the Comfort Zone.

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Traffic Data: Interstate 10, Wildwood SRRA

Design Guidance/Regulatory Code: 23 U.S.C. 319 101 Title 23: Highways Part 752 – Landscape and Roadside Development §752.5 Safety rest areas _ [Preliminary] Program: 102

In a 2011 report by the Dornbusch Associates for the

State Police Station – 2500 sq. ft.

California Department of Transportation [CALTRANS],100 the

Weigh Station – 500 sq. ft.

recommendation based on traffic patterns for long-range

Waiting Area, Lobby – 1000 sq. ft.

planning of 20 years is as follows:

Decks, Overlooks – 1500 sq. ft.

76 Parking Spaces Total

Restroom Facilities – based on code requirements +

55 Auto

Total square footage: 5500 sq. ft.+

21 Truck/Bus Travel from Los Angeles eastbound is 71.7 miles, approximately

and,

1 hour and 14 minutes. Travel from Palm Springs westbound is

Parking

40.1 miles, approximately 50 minutes. An estimated 1323

55 Auto

vehicles on average per day would stop at this site.

21 Truck/Bus _

101

100

Dornbusch Associates, “The California Department of Transportation,” [2011], 64.

An electronic resource provided by the Federal Government concerning design considerations. www.ecfr.gov. 102 Square footages are coming from estimates provided by Federal Highway Administration, Chapter 27 “Highway Rest Areas and Roadside Parking Areas” [2010].

[Preliminary] Code Analysis:

Section 1015.1 Exits or exit access doorways from spaces. Two exits or exit access doorways from any space shall be provided where one of the following conditions exists:

IBC 2012

1. The occupant load of the space exceeds one of the values in table 1015.1 [refer to table 1015.1]

Chapter 3 Use and Occupancy Classification

Section 1021.2: Exits from stories. Two exits, or exit access

Section 304.1 – Business Group B

stairways or ramps providing access to exits, from any story or

Civic Administration – B

occupied roof shall be provided where one of the following

Section 301.1 – Assembly Group A

conditions exists:

Tourism Lobby – A-3

1. The occupant load or number of dwelling units exceeds one of the values in Table 1021.2(1) or 1021.2(2)

Chapter 6 Types of Construction 602.3 Type III

Chapter 29: Plumbing Systems

Type III construction is that type of construction in which the exterior walls

Section 2902: Minimum Plumbing Facilities [refer to table 2902.1]

are of noncombustible materials and the interior building elements are of any

A-3

material permitted by this code. Fire-retardant-treated wood framing

Water Closets – Male and Female 1/500 = 1Male and Female

complying with Section 2303.2 shall be permitted within exterior wall

assemblies of a 2-hour rating or less.

Water Closets – Male and Female 1/25 for the first 50 and 1/50 for the

Table 602: Fire resistance rating requirements for exterior walls based on fire separation distance If X is greater than or equal to 30 there are no requirements for exterior wall fire rating for occupancy groups A and B [refer to table 602].

Chapter 10 Means of Egress Section 1004: Occupant Load [refer to table 1004.1.1] Business Areas, Police – 100 gross for 2500 sq. ft. = 25 Business Areas, Weigh – 100 gross for 500 sq. ft. = 5 Waiting Areas, Lobby – 15 gross for 1000 sq. ft. = 66 Decks, Overlooks – 15 gross for 1500 sq. ft. = 100 Occupant Load = 196 people

remainder exceeding 50 = 2 Male and Female

| APPENDIX C Recently this author was observing a critique at the Montana State University School of Architecture, and heard something Such a new theory should explore the circle route

that made him recoil, “And the kitchen for the bar and

from architecture through cosmology,

bathrooms make up the core of this building.”104 The response

thermodynamics, and complex systems, through

by the jurors then was, “. . .” [nothing]. This is horrifying not

biology and evolutionary theory, through social

simply because restrooms are a personal interest of my own,

psychology and psychology, through economics and

but because the statement unphased the jurors; they treated it

economic history and back again to architecture, to

with a palpable apathy, so they might move onto questions of

show that the activities of designing and making

‘architecture’; they treated it blindly; or to relate it idiomatically,

buildings and of organizing and forming and

‘if it was a snake, it would have bitten each one of them.’

planting the land are so deeply rooted in the doings of the universe that they must elaborate

This situation is another illustration of how the restroom is

themselves alongside all other human

embedded in western culture and how it is thought of in

activities, not self-simplify and flatten, if we

relation to design, as this thesis has established and interrogated

are to be happy on this planet. Life, whose

in the previous sections. How does the dialogue begin to

increase is called value, peeks out of a thousand

change, though? One tack might stem from its governing

masks, each of which grows in complexity and in

elements, building code for example. A community might, for

organization. One of them is

architecture.103

example, add to the code verbiage that addresses comfortable human occupation. Another tack might stem from the

103

To change the dialogue about restroom design and design in general, the dialogue needs to change. Benedikt’s argument responds to the value of design as a holistic enterprise. The trend in the building professions is to talk about ‘integrated design,’ yet how is it integrated if it only includes others in the building sphere and not sociologists, comedians, truck drivers, reporters, unwed mothers, and so forth? It is only integrated within the family. It is incestuous design. See Michael Benedikt, “Less for Less Yet: On Architecture’s Value[s] in the Marketplace,” Harvard Design Magazine 7 [1999], 6.

economics of restroom design; where is the money going and how can some of that money be diverted to generate return for 104

It would not be unfair to venture a guess that looking at all of the projects on the walls, a similar sentence could be stated by all of their designers.

the investor?105 While both of these directions begin to talk

standpoint during evacuation and access to facilities for

about value from a cultural standpoint, both options lack a

evacuation, but also safety from a sanitation standpoint and

deeper connection to the reality of the situation.

from a sociological standpoint. What emerged was the developing of a rest area that poked at concepts entrenched

The following pages explore, through a process of design,

deep within the western restroom’s cultural construction, and

affecting change deep within the system of concepts that relate

responded with a geography of circumstances to create a scale

the cultural construction of the modern western restroom. As

of impressions, memories, and/or levels of understanding

with Benedikt’s ‘New Theory,’ the process of architectural

regarding our relationship to evacuation.

design initiated set tendrils into peripheral areas of biology,

complex systems, cosmology and cosmography, and so forth. The end aspiration was to generate a new typology of the

To start, the development of a conceptual diagram that

restroom through the design of the rest area in Calimesa,

takes the previous analysis and visualizes the information in a

California, described as Exercise A1-1.

distilled manner. _

This new typology would engage the cultural conditions discussed in this text, thereby making visible in a deeper sense evacuation.106 The issue at hand in all of this is that the individual wants a clean toilet and a clean space to evacuate. Involved are implications of safety from not only a vulnerability 105

This was explored briefly through a cost estimation exercise of the public restroom at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado. It was decided not to be track to follow a priori to developing cultural ideas in relation to architectural space making. Once a cultural architecture is advanced, cost estimating can be brought in as a tool to make changes a reality, not drive change or design. For more on this exercise see the process described over the following pages and areas for further exploration. 106 This directly is contrary to the ‘flush and forget’ concept identified previously. See Places of Separation starting on page 38 of this text.

Information Visualization

Figure 48: Philosophical position on architecture concept diagram based on written text and built into a visual system of interrelated concepts [left].

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Figure 49: Interrogative of restroom based on understanding from text [above].

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Figure 50: One sequence of building of the interrogative diagram starting with the concept of human evacuation [pages 75-81].

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Figure 51: This is a critical point in the design process. At this point it was understood that the insertion point for a design to influence the system would be to engage a cycle. Conceptually this would be in line with the philosophical understanding of architecture, as well as the current state of ‘flush and forget.’ By engaging a cycle, such as a composting toilet scheme, an individual would better understand the implications of their bodily functions. This could potentially influence other relationships in the system of concepts as described in the next few built diagrams.

_ Data Visualization

Figure 52: Usage data on the occupation of safety roadside rest areas.

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Figure 53: Primary user group data for California Safety Roadside Rest Areas.

Design Primers and Precedent

Figure 54: Architectural Language of the site context and site analysis collage.

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Figure 55: Manifesto on human manure composting. See Jenkins, Joseph. The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure. 3rd ed. Grove City: Joseph Jenikins, Inc., 2005. 11-12. Print.

Figure 56: Josey Pavilion by Lake | Flato Architects in Decantur, Texas. The project was examined for its use of rainwater collection and wind mitigation strategies.

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Figure 57: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center campus in Austin, Texas, by Overland Partners and Sanders Architecture with W. Grey Smith as landscape architect. This precedent was analyzed in regards to different methods of creating pathways to nest program and guide users through the landscape.

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Figure 58: Clivus Multrum © composting toilet system. The understanding of compact composting systems that can handle human fecal composting at a commercial scale was provided by this unique system.

Existing Site Plan

Selected Design Sketches: Engaging a Cycle

Figure 59: Initial translation of concepts in physical design ideas.

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Figure 60: Courtyard climate spatial relationships based on buildings by John Gaw Meem and Lake|Flato.

Figure 61: Thinking about transitions and movement between a datum, an organizing element of the site.

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Figure 62: General occupation by public users. Sequence of different scenarios in which someone might occupy the site.

Figure 63: General schedule of the composting toilets to prime and understanding of how the site will be occupied from an authority standpoint.

97Â Â

Figure 64: Schematic diagramming toilet room ideas of occupation. In this sense the diagram does not respond to a five foot diameter circle, but the movement between different functions.

Figure 65: Schematic toilet room design iteration.

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Figure 66: Schematic site scheme overlay finalized based on pavilion buildings and movement through the landscape and different nested functions. The parking lot stays the same from the preexisting site plan. This provided a basis to begin laying out a spatial grid on the site and forming the buildings.

99Â Â

Figure 67: Design Development, Site Plan and Site Section. Issues arose with confusion about the location of restrooms to the visitor and some general circulation questions. Positives included a consolidation to one restroom facility to prevent emergent segregation, as well as an integration maintenance and visitor functions.

100Â Â

Figure 68: Design Development restroom plan and boardwalk section. The idea behind the design was to allow not only accessibility through an extended ramp experience, but also engage the sloping topography. To the left is a rainwater cistern to collect roof water. Each of the pods are an individual restroom to provide privacy and allow for the ‘family’ restroom so that there are not disenfranchised users based on disability or family status.

101

Figure 69: Design development of maintenance building to engage the sequence of operations, where compost would be packaged and agricultural products would be processed.

Figure 70: Design development of caretaker and state police offices. The portion of the site was redesigned to be a drainage swale. The initial ideas also included an observation tower to begin engaging the edge of the arroyo. This, however, was changed to overlooks at both the restroom areas and the caretaker.

102Â Â

Figure 71: Design development aerial site plan looking to the east.

Figure 72: Design development occupational perspectives of the site.

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Figure 73: Design development maintenance occupational performative specification.

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Figure 74: Design development performative specification of the restroom spaces and transitional sequences.

105Â Â

Final Design Boards

Figure 75: Site plan, 1/16" = 1'-0".

106

Figure 76: Caretaker Plan, 1/16"=1'-0". A portion of the program here was devoted to a cooling tower to help moderation the temperature during the summer time.

Figure 77: Maintenance and restroom buildings plan with educational gardens in the center, 1/16"=1'-0".

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Figure 78: Site plan analysis images and keyed images. Above, building shadow studies to understand shading on the site. Left top to bottom, Infographics to key site plan with water collection and site activities; site-scale materials; site-scale climatic approach.

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Figure 79: Annotated site section north-south. This section describes the relationship of the maintenance cycle interweaved with elements of user occupation. The annotations provide a narrative to the occupation, and gives a sense of scale to compost production on the site.

109Â Â

Figure 80: Site section of maintenance building and portion of educational gardens.

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Figure 81: Site section of toilet room facilities and educational gardens.

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Figure 83: Detailed and annotated toilet room and rest area section. This provides an indication of the layers of space between the actual toilet room and the outside world. As part of the sustainable strategies for the site, a constructed wetland was designed to be a transitional feature. One would cross the wetland, as well as be surrounded by its presence during the process. Figure 82: Possible movement diagrams on catwalks between boardwalk and toilet room spaces. These become ways to break down the cultural ideas of separation and force people into uncomfortable/not yet comfortable proximities to each other.

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Figure 84: Possible experiential perspective from the caretaker pavilion complex. Note directionality towards the restroom toilet spaces.

Figure 85: Boardwalk experiential perspective of restroom 'antechamber' space. Note transitions between spaces as well as the various ways to occupy and linger within the spaces.

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Figure 86: Experiential perspective of one of the eddy spaces for lingering before or after use of the toilet facilities. Note maintenance operations in the background.

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Figure 87: Experiential perspective of entry to the site after hours. Note: In the background you can see the ghosted image of a person utilizing the restroom, and this begins to indicate a feeling of safety.

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_ Costing Analysis for Further Development

Figure 89: As part of an exploration into the value of a restroom architecture, the work turned towards cost analysis. In this case the costs were estimated of the public restrooms in the Clyfford Still Museum. CSMeans data was employed as the primary source, and was used to estimate the construction cost of the in-fill shell of the restroom as well as yearly maintenance and utility costs. It was determined after its creation to be a difficult avenue to pursue, as it was not directly related to rest areas. It would be an advantageous avenue to pursue further into design and physical fruition of space. This would allow ideas not to be driven by economic decisions, which was an issue identified in a previous section, “Places of.”

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_ 2015 Montana State University Research Day Figure 90: Left The poster presented at Research Day 2015. As part of spreading research done within the School of Architecture to the larger University, this author and a contingency of other graduate students producing research submitted abstracts for the 2015 Student Research Day on the MSU campus. Valuable insights were gained from this experience not only in relation to how to present the research, but how people would react. The reactions I got to the title of the research itself were both negative and positive. On the negative end were people who read the initial title, scolded the research, and then moved onto a different project. On the positive end were people who were curious about ‘why?’ Why is the restroom important? Why spend a year struggling with the topic? From this presentation, this author was also able to find holes in the transitions between steps in the research and design processes. For example, there needed to be a clarification in the transition between the observation and the composting toilet design problem [engaging a cycle]. The 2015 MSU Student Research Day was on April 9, 2015, and this author participated in the afternoon session of the presentations.

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Safety Roadside Rest Area [SRRA] attempts to bridge that space

Final Design Synthesis

by creating more intermediate spaces in-between. One example are the spaces of maintenance and the traveler

What is most intriguing about the restroom and the toilet in

or occupant. Normally these spheres of influence do not cross

general is that it is an artifact that draws all of humanity, all of

each other. There is a time designated for maintenance, and a

existence together. Both animate and in-animate entities

time designated for occupancy. In the SRRA design these two

evacuate. The stars evacuate as they burn off the billions of

things become intermixed in the same space. Tomatoes are

years of energy coagulated in their gravity. The smallest

being grown next to the composting toilets that produced the

microorganisms evacuate as they rummage through matter that

nutrients utilized for their growth; what once was, will be

cannot be described by the human words of soil, or water, skin.

something else, which will be what it once was, again.

Evacuation holds us to the universe. Just as it is comforting to know that a tasty sandwich will eventually depart and move on

Another example is space between the toilet room and the

to another state, it is even more comforting to know this is true

public realm. Again, normally these spheres of influence do not

for all beings.

cross each other. Lingering outside or inside toilet room spaces

implies a social deviancy. The SRRA design creates social spaces at various scales of proximity to toilet spaces. There is the The design exercise illustrated that there is a space between

immediate space outside the toilet rooms, which are devoted to

high technology, racing forward at a seemingly unstoppable pace

the wait; the wait to use a toilet and the wait for others after

and distancing ourselves from reality; and the primal experience

the use of the toilet. Simple strategies from a well-placed seat

of evacuation – defecation and micturition – so thick in our tens

for those who need the physical relief to an extra wide

of thousands of years of human history, as well as the billions of

boardwalk to allow for pause without interrupting the flow of

years of matter’s current state of existence. The Wildwood

traffic. These ideas extend further out into the designed landscape with eddies and nooks associated with plantings and

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the adjacent arroyo, and the desire at a rest area to stretch

The designed site connects into agriculture to visualize the cycle

your legs and extend your body otherwise impossible in a car.

of growth decay and growth. It connects into care and respect,

Each of these presents an offering to come a little further out

as the caretaker and his or her crew maintains the property and

into the landscape; an invitation to linger; and opportunity to

manages its usage. This then connects into social perceptions of

stay and be present within the world.

rest areas by building a mutual trust, respect, and safety by providing a normally large scale process at an immediately

A consequence of generating more space in-between is that

perceivable scale. And the design connects into the need for

there is an industriousness going on at the SRRA. The

consideration of the environment. Through the processes of

industriousness provides a level of safety beyond what typically

amending the soil to maintain fertility and moisture, and

exists at roadside rest areas. It is referencing Jane Jacob’s ‘eyes

reduction of water usage through non hydraulic flush toilet

on the street,’107 where the activity generates a social security

system, on-site water collection, and on-site greywater reuse

of being with other people during the day, and during the night

and treatment, the designed site better acknowledges the place

the state police offices provide oversight of the rest area.

within which it exists.

Additionally, the spaces in-between give visitors the opportunity

to ask questions of the activities on the site. With maintenance workers weeding the gardens, and plowing the fields, and

Further exploration is needed into emergent topics from the

turning the compost each day and week and month, visitors can

design process and examination. Of particular importance is

feed their curiosity and become informed about the cycle of

continuing to push the accommodation of the overall human

compost.

experience. We are at the same time individual and interrelated to everything around us. The responsibility of this

The composting toilet system and peripheral inputs

relationship extends into the worlds of equity and fairness, as

employed on the site connects into various systems outside of

well as an acute consideration of how our actions affect others

itself to strengthen an individual’s association with the world.

– no doubt an idealistic statement. What can be the role of the

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Jacobs [1961], 23-4.

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designer in influencing these spaces? Who will lead the discussion of accommodation, pleasure, and comfort?

This text and design exercise has been an [imperative] interrogation of how we humans occupy a space devoted to our being: the restroom. Benjamin Franklin writes on the imagined

Gender relationships also present themselves as issues

permanence of the Constitution of the United States of

needing more critical exploration. As our culture moves

America, “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except

towards a constructing our gender and sexes according to an

death and taxes.”108 Arguably, however, in this world nothing

individual’s understanding of themselves, separation becomes an

can be said to be certain, except death and evacuation – taxes are

archaic notion. Will there be new separations based on

simply necessary. This text has not been a purely aesthetic

different qualities of individuals? How is our evolving

exploration, nor a quantifiable reinterpretation of the restroom.

understanding of ourselves and the impulsions of the body

This has been part treatise, part polemic, and part empiric about

unfolding in contemporary society?

the quality of our human-generated environment.

And finally issues of morality within a capitalistic society should be fleshed out in relation to spaces for evacuation. While it is difficult to pin-point a quality so colloquially of our current society that has influenced restroom design, consumerism and the desire for bigger, faster, cheaper has driven quality into the toilet. What are the long-term implications of such rash and short-sided decision making? What will be left of the physical environment and our psyche if everything crumbles around us or is so unaccommodating that our bodies eventually refuse it? _ 108

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Benjamin Franklin. Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy [13 November 1789].

_ Final Anecdote on the Status of the Hydraulic Flush To employ the city to enrich the plain would be a Paris throws five million a year into the sea. And

sure success. If our gold is manure, on the other,

this not metaphorically. How, and what way? Day

our manure is gold. What is done with this gold,

and night. With what purpose? None. With what

manure? It is swept into the abyss.

thought? Without thinking about it. For what use? For nothing. By means of what organ? By means of

At great expense, we send out convoys of ships, to

its intestine. What is its intestine? Its Sewer…

gather up at the South Pole the droppings of petrels and penguins, and the incalculable element of

After long experimentation, science now knows that

wealth that we have at hand we send to the

the most fertilizing and the most effective of

sea. All the human and animal manure that the

manures is that of man. The Chinese, we must say

world loses, if restored to the land instead of being

to our shame, knew it before us. No Chinese

thrown into the water, would suffice to nourish the

peasant, Eckerberg tells us, goes to the city without

world… This garbage heaped up beside the stone

carrying back, at the two ends of his bamboo pole,

blocks, the tumbrels of mire jolting through the

two buckets full of what we call filth. Thanks to

streets at night, the awful scavengers’ carts, the

human fertilizer, the earth in China is still as young

fetid streams of subterranean slime that the

as in the days of Abraham. Chinese wheat yields a

pavement hides from you, do you know what all this

hundred and twenty-fold. There is no guano

is? It is the flowering meadow, it is the green

comparable in fertility to the detritus of a

grass, it is marjoram and thyme and sage, it

capital. A great city is the most powerful of dung

is game, it is cattle, it is the satisfied lowing

producers.

of huge oxen in the evening, it is perfumed

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hay, it is golden wheat, it is bread on your table, it is joy, it is life. So wills that mysterious creation, transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven. Put that into the great crucible; your abundance will spring from it. The nutrition of the plains make the nourishment of men. You have the power to throw away this wealth, and to think me ridiculous into the bargain. That will be the crowning glory of your ignorance… The present system does harm in attempting to do good. The intention is good, the result is sad. Men think they are purging the city; they are emaciating the population… A sewer is a mistake.109

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A description from more than a century and a half ago, 1867. ‘Flush and forget’ is integral to the understanding of the restroom and our human relationship to the world. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables [Np: Penguin Classics, 1982] 93-7.

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