Print and Online Resources on Restroom Design and Management
We’re tracking the latest and updating the PHLUSH annotated bibliography. Please revisit this page often and send your suggestions.
Books
The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters. By Rose George. Henry Holt and Company. 2008. Hip and meticulous British journalist Rose George offers a sobering and eye-opening account of just how badly the world handles this one great and inevitable problem. Says one reviewer, “What if you learned that a particular problem was causing 80% of the illness in the world and was killing a child every fifteen seconds? Would you want to find out more, and insist that governments and the world do more, to improve the problem? What if you learned that one of the big reasons that governments and the world aren’t doing more is that the problem is, well, yucky, and people don’t like talking or thinking about it? There are blunter words for the problem, and Rose George uses them.”
Poop Culture: How America is Shaped by its Grossest National Product. By Dave Praeger, 2007. “It’s the most universal human experience.” claims journalist Praeger, “So why does it cause so much shame, embarrassment, and angst? This book explores why we see this bodily function the way we do, how this view impacts the way we deal with the physical byproduct, and the social and environmental issues that arise because we’re too uncomfortable to discuss them.” According to one reviewer, “Underneath the entertaining history and stories about poop there exist some fundamental and very important issues. For example, our culture’s shame of defecation translates into a rather unhealthy and irrational way of dealing with poop on a practical level–as evidenced by our toilet and sewer design. Praeger provides some greener alternatives to the way things have been done in the past.”
Books on Restroom Design In the past three years a number of beautiful works on toilet design have appeared. Almost all are by Europeans and refer more to privately-owned facilities in public places rather than publicly-owned facilities in public spaces.
Flush! Modern Toilet Design. Ingrid Wenz-Gahler. Birkhauser – Publishers for Architecture. 2005. In this richly illustrated book, the author shows how avant-garde restrooms are the calling cards for clubs, restaurants and corporate headquarters. Information on western toilet history and the current state of affairs is included.
Public Toilet Design: From Hotels, Bars, Restaurants, Civic Buildings and Businesses Worldwide. Cristina del Valle Schuster, Trends in Architecture. 2005. Lamenting the lack of interest in the design community on restrooms, the author offers superb photographs and commentary on 278 facilities in restaurants, clubs, cinemas, fitness centers, hotels, places of work and commuting spaces.
Inclusive Urban Design: Public Toilets. Clara Greed. Architectural Press. 2003. Greed insists that “public toilets should be seen as an integral and important component of modern urban design and town planning policy at city-wide, local area and individual site level”. Too often architects and planners look narrowly at the legal specifications for the facilities and ignore both the way restrooms interact with their surroundings and the changing needs of users.
Periodicals and Papers
World Toilet Summit, Delhi, 2007 - Abstracts of papers.
Water: An increasingly precious resource Sanitation: A matter of dignity, DFID
Websites
Through the lively Poop Report and the Poop Culture website former Wall Street Journal reporter Dave Praeger keeps up with readers and fans, offering a fascinating look at cultural attitudes which are finally may be changing.
Blogs
The Water Blog, Portland Water Bureau
Blogging on Water by John Oldfield
Sanitation Updates, WASH
