Upon reviewing our tweets and retweets from the past year it was decided there were enough to fill two blog posts as well as spotlight one topic in a third (this one). The topic of lavatories was flushed out from the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) member survey tweet, about the best museum bathrooms, based on over 200 responses. Laboratory because we feel there needs to be more playful experimentation in their presentation along with more purposeful use as an integral part of a site mission.
The AAM survey received an interesting proposal as part of the entries – pointing towards the consideration of a new position - a curator of bathrooms. This would place bathrooms as a key element of the guest experience reflecting their strategic welcoming importance. This may have been tongue-in-cheek (how apropos) butt it does deserve some deliberation.
We were bowled over by the diverse design examples supplied. Best Criteria seemed fairly loose if non-existent – in the eyes of the beholder kind of thing. Get prepared because urine for a wide range of entries – all with a different angle (I promise from now on no more droppings of silly scatological puns in the text).
Before we launch into a few select AAM entries, I must confess I am a bathroom design junkie with quite a collection of what I consider best practices. Yours truly cannot always avoid getting in the picture as the first image attests to. Right off the bat, walls have the opportunity to reinforce a sense of place or culture as this iconographic tile design illustrates. This was used in the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, in Whistler, British Columbia. Hand in hand with a creative interior is the creative treatment of the rest room directional signage that presents an opportunity to avoid the generic cold institutional feel. Instead, you can have some fun and pick images that relate back to the site messaging as the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre did.
Washrooms can often be among the first impressions that visitors get from your site. The majority of visitors will visit them at least once during their experience. For this reason, they can play a critical role in atmosphere building and reinforcing your mission yet they are often neglected. They provide way more potential than simply catering to people’s basic needs. In the following case of an outdoor facility the colourful facade clearly presents a fun, well maintained and clean exterior – giving the impression of a well-cared for interior- something outdoor washrooms don’t universally demonstrate. Additionally, the image reinforces the heritage of sternwheelers on the nearby lake as well as sand castle beach frivolity. What sort of impression do your restrooms project?
AAM blog post author Joseph O’Neill set the stage with this statement: “From the visitor perspective, bathrooms can be all-important, revealing just how carefully the designers of a public space considered their comfort and needs…for some people—including those who care for young children, who are transgender or gender-nonconforming, or who have disabilities—this importance can be heightened, and even a barrier to visiting a place altogether.” This summer I experienced my first-ever gender-neutral facility, featuring floor-to-ceiling stalls and a communal sink area at a local historical park. It felt strange initially then wonderful because of the feeling of equity rather than separateness.
We have to reassess our building facade and the service facilities within our sites to gauge whether they provide a sense of inclusion and belonging for all visitors. During the most recent EID participatory webinar we introduced this concept when discussing how comfortable we are all with the welcoming design aspect (or lack of) within our sites. Email us to let us know if you missed that session and would like to have us offer it again. If several staff members from your site and even neighbouring sites would like to book a digital session over zoom, Mike and I would love to accommodate.
Let’s get to the examples chosen from the AAM article for this blog post. From the standpoint of a bathroom-exclusive exhibition, the Mariners’ Museum and Park had great panels in its stalls that explained bathroom elements on ships and using the bathroom at sea. A Head of Its Time: A Brief History of Going at Sea, discussed topics like why the facilities—or lack thereof—were called the head; “as well as the wisdom of keeping tabs on wind direction and how sailors improvised before toilet paper.”
Located at the site of a former psychiatric hospital, the Glore Psychiatric Museum keeps its bathrooms strikingly on theme, again through wall and stall panels, using them as an opportunity to teach about topics like optical illusions and phobias.
The walls of the bathrooms at Planet Word in Washington, DC feature euphemisms for going to the restroom (e.g. ‘seeing a man about a horse’) and wordplays on famous quotations (e.g. I stink, therefore I am.)
Beyond the 2- dimensional use of walls how about the Charleston Museum in South Carolina that created a wall mounted exhibit case featuring a chamber pot display.
chamber pot display courtesy AAM blogpost
At this juncture I need to insert a really novel “exhibit” example I discovered at a regional heritage site in Creston, British Columbia. A two- door closed cabinet was situated in the washroom with the label Do not peek Unmentionables for Ladies on the outside doors. The word “not” had a line strike through it egging you on to open them. Lo and behold -undergarments and period advertisements are on display. I am not sure what was in the ladies’ washroom – a parallel unmentionables for men??
Certainly, in the category of memorable washrooms is the Denver Museum of Art where, “The sinks sing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ as you wash your hands. A visitor called Melody commented that “You can get the sinks to sing in canon if you time it right.” This singing sink idea was created by Denver artist and designer Jim Green, who is also known for a Laughing Escalator at the Colorado Convention Center. This may be technologically too much for your budget, so if you desire to lighten your visitor’s mood try using images of smiles as To be more on pointthat can be very effective. Another option would be installing a motion detector or pressure sensor that triggers a sound track of laughter when they enter (maybe not before you enter the restroom but before you enter your site’s main door).
Although the singing sinks is very catchy, it seems more appropriate as a mission driven experience for a children’s museum or the birthplace of a composer, songwriter or lyricist rather than an art museum. To be more on point, you could produce an audible track that has a connection to your mission and that changes over time depending on the season, temporary display, or exhibit.
What does an art gallery do with its restrooms? It uses them as a canvas! Commission artists to design the whole restroom as a functional piece of art. Not only that but why not partner with the Kohler Trust for Arts and Education and Kohler Company, who manufactures bathroom fixtures? That’s exactly what the Smith College Museum of Art, in Massachusetts did when they instructed two artists to sink their teeth into projects that would tap their creativity to “blur the boundaries between form and function.” The result: glass panels that were “translucent optical windows or doors into the watery world beyond the architecture, along with water drop imagery continued in the sinks and other fixtures. The second restroom has tiles with narrative images of transformation and creation myths interspersed with drawings of large, tear-like droplets that enclose tiny human forms, a reference to a creation theme.
Guess what? There is a John Michael Kohler Arts Center, in Wisconsin, with six spectacular artist-designed bathrooms. These were produced through the centre’s artist-in-residence program that allows participants to experiment with the Kohler company’s manufacturing technologies and materials. Check out on Instagram to see their stunning ceramic masterpieces. If there was a beauty competition they would win “hands down” or should we say “pants down”.
If you want to explore more of the restroom entry images, then the source website is: https://www.aam-us.org/2022/07/29/the-best-museum-bathrooms-according-to-museum-people/
You don’t have to go overboard in a design sense but some thought should be given to spice up the industrial look and continue your connections to mission and outcomes, as these previous places demonstrate.
For your first enhancement, taking a foray down into an esoteric dream world is not our recommendation but choosing some more mission-driven practical approach would be. We have all seen the use of stalls for posting notices and ads over urinals in men’s bathrooms (not sure what happens in the women’s bathrooms) which are often hand written scrawls. However, I have also seen an effective and professional use of washrooms as a locus of information and marketing channel. Here is one example posted on the lower right corner of the washroom mirror at my local Valley Zoo. They are raising awareness about their fundraising project for four new “child’s eye view” immersive landscapes: Above, Between, On, and Under. To me, this works as an appropriate clean and clear information extension to be read when washing your hands and singing the popular song “going to the zoo, zoo, zoo…how about you, you, you…”
Stay tuned for the next post involving more Tales from the Twittersphere.