… someone should make the signs go away…
i’m not sure men would take that much longer using a stall than a urinal, but i see your point. the rest will have to wait their turn etc. but having urinals will take up too much space.
what if there wasn’t a steady flow of people in and out, or it was empty just long enough for a woman to drag a man into one of the toilet rooms?
that can happen with stalls in an enclosed private room, but the sinks in this case can be behind transparent walls (or no walls even) since it’s a public area. if it’s a concern, cameras can be installed.
under the current setup a woman can easily follow a man to a toilet without being noticed. (he might already be in the stalls) following someone into a single occupant room unnoticed, on the other hand, can be rather tricky.
Do you really think installing cameras in a bathroom is a good idea?
no but in this case, the area with the sinks technically aren’t part of the toilet anymore.
Don’t you think your idea is now starting to get just a wee-bit ridicolous? And it’s simply to amend a system that doesn’t need fixing.
yeah but it’s not really my idea. it’s just the next logical step from those single unisex toilets that are cropping up.
I think the point is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to every scenario.
Some environments would probably benefit from the unisex scenario that OP is proposing, but I’m going to wager that high-volume environments aren’t one of them. I’ve seen set-ups similar to this and they have been invariably in posh trendy lounges where it fits with the gimmick. I can also see this working in other upscale, low volume environments where families with children are prone to inhabit in which space isn’t an issue.
The major problem I see with your point is that some of you “pros” you list are mitigated by one another.
For example:
the ladies’ queue - since anyone can use any unoccupied rooms.
the space issues - since it’s compact and shared.
These two are going to be mutually exclusive in anything close to a high traffic environement. The loss of urinals and expansion of the stalls into “throne rooms” are going to create a much lower toilet to space raitio. Not to mention a slower turnover rate for men. As a result you’ll either have to make the facilities bigger than existing configurations, or you’re going to have to tolerate lines for both sexes.
You’re overlooking the fact that the urinal is much better than a toilet. It is the primary cause of the cleanliness disparity that’s been commented on here.
When using a urinal there is very little spillage compared to using a toilet, and the turn around time is much less than that of the stall. Plus they are cleaner when you consider that there’s no need for men to touch the toilet seat. This is the biggest factor in why womens rooms are so nasty compared to mens. On the whole our toilets stay clean because they get minimal use, and when they do get used there’s no hovering/spraying since we’re typically taking a crap. Women however only use toilets, and therefore they see alot more action. This extra action creates a scenario where women percieve them as dirtier (though it’s fair to say that women are generally more squeemish about parking it on the toilet seats than men anyways) and as a result are more prone to hovering…a recipe for disaster. This snowballs to the point where the womens room is cause for EPA intercedence.
By eliminating the urinal, you’re taking away the cleanest, most compact, and most time efficient and water efficient feature in bathrooms. That alone is enough to derail any thoughts that your system is a faster, more cost-effective solution.
These unisex bathrooms should be viewed as a luxury, not as a utility.
well said Omniscient. i’ll just raise some points involved.
[ul][li]the ‘throne rooms’ aren’t very much different from stalls. with some clever design they won’t be that much bigger. [/li][li]urinals are convenient for men, but it’s not the men that need speeding up. [/li][li]with only half the number of sinks needed in this case and no urinals, that makes up for more space for those in need, regardless of sex. [/li][li]the onus of hygiene is with usage and maintenance, not so much on the design. [/li][/ul]
ps if hovering is a major concern. why not revert to those obsolete ‘toilet on the floor’ designs? nobody likes sitting on public toilet seats anyway…
pps can you tell i am really unfamiliar with toilet terminology from this thread? but i can’t use the word ‘bathroom’. (there are no baths!)
Can I make a suggestion?
Take a regular multi-stall bathroom. Now take the stalls and bring the dividers all the way up to the ceiling. Put in some stalls with urinals in them, if you want (with appropriate pictograms). Finally, take off the door to the bathroom – make it open-plan.
The effect is a sort of corridor with sinks and mirrors, leading to a wallful of safe and private small bathrooms, requiring no more space than a standard multi-stall bathroom. Its being open-plan would allay the security fears of those who think it’s just bad news to have women and men in the same multi-stall bathroom (notwithstanding the fact that they’re set up like this in McGill Residences, with showers even.)
In the places where I have used unisex bathrooms (everywhere from gay clubs to european camp sites-where there were actual baths and showers) it hasn’t bothered me.
However, I can see the advantage of having some things not previously mentioned that I saw in some places.
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An attendant/cleaner: solves security issues, and if they’re on minimum wage plus tips, not hugely costly to the owner.
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A stall with a sink and mirror (no toilet) in it. Because sometimes, as MLS said, you don’t need to pee, but you need to change your clothes or deal with a stain. Washing blood-stained panties in the sink is probably best done in private.
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Some kiddie height toilets and sinks.
4)Wheelchair accessible stalls and sinks.
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Baby changing area.
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The guys are going to have to learn to deal with vending machines which dispense tampons, and a rubbish bin for Fempro in each stall.
Well, if the throne rooms use permanent walls will increase the space they occupy substantially alone, no matter how compact you try and make them as the current stall set-up is as compact as is possible. Any change is garaunteed to add square-footage per toilet.
You system doesn’t speed anyone up. Women are going to be just as slow in a unisex bathroom as they are in a womens room. All it does is slow men down, and since the population is about 50/50, it’ll create the same amount of delay as the current system except for both sexes. The only way your method would help is if by unifying the bathrooms you are able to add to the overall toilet count.
Also, you have twice as many people using the space, why would you think you could get away with half as many sinks?
As much as it’s nice to blame the mess on peoples actions, you can’t disregard it in design. Facilities need to be easy to use, and easy to keep clean or the law of averages dictate that many will end up a pig sty. Just saying that people and management need to be claner doesn’t make it so, and if you design encourages more messiness (or higher cleaning costs) than the current system then it has failed.
To elaborate on this point a little.
Lets assume you have a simple stall arrangement. 6 stalls, all side by side sharing the middle wall between each. Lets assume these stalls, built the old fashioned way with 1 inch steel partial walls, are 3’ wide and 5’ deep. You end up with a total square footage of 120 sq ft, a block of stalls 5’ on one side and 24" on the other.
Lets replace those 1 inch partitions with a permanent floor-to-ceiling 2x4 and drywall framed wall. The 2x4 is 3.5" wide, the drywall is 3/4" on each side. This doesn’t account for any mouldings or panelling. That increases the border around each stall to 5" instead of 1". That makes the entire block of stalls now 5 2/3’ on one side and 27" on the other. A square footage of 153 sq ft. A 27.5% increase in overall area used with absolutely no increase in usable space or functionality. That is very substantial.
So, you’ll have to agrue whether or not people will tolerate a unisex environement using the current 1" steel walled stalls, or if you can account for the 27.5% increase in space per stall (and slower overall average use time due to the lack of urinals) to serve an equal or grater volume of people by unifying the bathrooms into one. I don’t see how you could possibly argue that it’ll be more efficient.
IMHO, it’ll only work as a luxury option, it’s too impractical in a high volume setting like stadiums, bars, airports and malls.
Those calculation were done based of a 8 stall configuration, not a 6 stall one. Oops.
Why don’t they make the steel walls in such a way as to go all the way up to the ceiling and down to the floor?
Or maybe we should just do away with biological labels, live underwater in the lost city of Atlantis where mermaids sing & tuxedoed dolphins bring you breakfast.
They do in some places, airports are the most typical one that comes to mind. I think it has something to do with protecting people’s bags while they are crapping or something.
I think the real issue with using them in a coed bathroom would be that they invariably leave alot to be desired from a privacy standpoint. The gaps between the wall panes and the door are usually pretty significant and allow plenty of room to peek through. Probably not ideal for a unisex environement.
good idea. put the urinals in the stalls and we don’t have to remove them!
- they used to do this. except for pub/discos they don’t have attendants anymore. i assume it’s the cost.
- these can be handled in the baby room.
3-6) yes, especially 3.
imho stalls should outnumber sinks by 2:1 at least, as most people need the mirrors more than the taps. if this is unacceptable, sinks might be located outside the current toilet area along the corridors, as toilets are usually located in out of the way corners of the building.
the gaps can be overcomed with some thoughts to design. if people are okay with matt_mcl’s idea, will it address your concern?
if it isn’t more efficient, it will indeed be a luxury. i was thinking people would design their toilets smaller even, cutting down on redundancy.
When we’ve done dealing with this one, might I suggest we ‘bring balance’ to another inconvenient lack of uniformity and just make everyone the same height mandating the compulsory use of stilts or by trimming their legs to size? It would probably be most convenient if everyone were the same height as, oh, I dunno… me?
Surely there is some kind of caulking, maybe a rubber lip, that could be used to prevent this.