“The world needs more toilet architects!”
The statement came out of nowhere and, as is often the case when you hear a unique string of words during an attention vacuum, I had to play the moment back in my mind before I realized what my friend had said. I responded instinctively.
“Pardon!?”
The Canadian I was sat next to repeated himself. “The world needs more toilet architects. Look over there.”
We were sat next to one another in a provincial Turkish airport, absorbed in the silence of our respective worlds, my gaze was internal and his was clearly external. I followed his line of sight and my eyes latched onto the entrance of the only men’s loo in our terminal. I turned to him in puzzlement.
“Wait for it. Keep looking,” he encouraged.
I turned back, and strained to see what he had noticed. It took a while but then I twigged. The designer had placed the urinals behind the entrance wall, a standard design. But then someone had proceeded to mount a full length mirror on the wall behind the urinals, blessing us with opportunity to see around the obscuring wall to the line of men availing themselves of the facilities.
That moment became a catalyst for a lively discussion as we waited to board our fight. The two of us reeled off toilet failing after toilet failing: having to stand on the toilet to be able to close the door, needing to dislocate your spine to retrieve the loo roll, driers so close to the sink that you can’t use either independently, single ply toilet paper requiring reams to be in any way effective, hyper-sensitive auto flushes that turn toilets into unexpectedly refreshing bidets, and so on.
We see these kinds of failings everywhere. Colliding drawers built into the right angle of a kitchen, a popular road crossing blocked by buses because the their stop is sited mere steps away, tarmac paths around fields ignored by people whose footsteps create a dirt line across the grass as they take the shortest route between an entrance and exit. Is all of this a lack of empathy, or just a lack of care? And is that the same thing?
There was a wonderful concept presented in season IV of the science fiction sitcom, Red Dwarf. It was a karma prison, where the prisoners were fated to suffer the very crimes they committed on others. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if the people behind all these design failures had to live with the fruits of their own work? It’s a nice idea, and I confess the idea of karma gets me through some moments, but I’m not sure it exists. Until it does I’ll be standing on toilets to close doors, and checking for inappropriately placed mirrors.
