Design Trends: Inclusion, Privacy, Efficiency, & Convenience

AllAccessibleToilet

We’ve been taking a closer look at contemporary restrooms and see some excellent trends in their design, namely inclusion, privacy, efficiency, and convenience. INCLUSION Inclusive, gender-neutral restrooms serve everyone from those caring for opposite-sex children or elders to gender non-conforming people. Unlike single unisex ADA toilet rooms, new space-efficient facilities bring everyone into the same…

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Social inclusion, toilet rights, and legal protection for transgender Americans

Public toilets have long been at the forefront of human rights advocacy in the United States. During the past year, the transgender community and parents of young children who identify with a gender other than their birth sex have successfully advocated for laws requiring gender-neutral toilet rooms to ensure greater privacy. This expansion of the…

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Celebrate First Flush of Portland Loo #5 at 1 pm Jan 31st

Isn’t it weirdly cool that we live in a city that celebrates the first flush of every new Portland Loo?  Actually, these repeated inaugurals tell us something.  A product has met a need.  The city has provided a service citizens think is important. People are using the Loo and talking about it.  The co-location of…

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Building Safe Toilet Design into Shared Urban Space

  That’s the title of our paper presented at the recent World Toilet Summit in Hainan, China.   PHLUSH believes that public toilets should be as much a part of the streetscape as sidewalks and street lamps. But as public restroom advocates all over North America know, it’s an uphill battle. For many public officials the…

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Will no-mix toilets work on San Francisco streets?

At PHLUSH we’ve been looking at urine diversion technologies and think no-mix toilets are going to be really important in the future.  And we’re keen to get the word out as we consider earthquake preparedness and what to do for emergency household toilets when we can’t flush.  So a proposal, picked up by the New York Times,…

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Three-year old inaugurates Jamison Square Loo

The forth in a walkable chain of Portland Loos was inaugurated under sunny skies this week.  The honors of the First Flush went to three-year old Clark Bradley, standing here with his Mom and City Commissioner Randy Leonard in front of Loo with its colorful door designed by graphic artist Sarah Fine.The Loo stands across the…

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It's high time for 21st century design.

Why are we still are building public restroom facilities designed for mid 20th century families rather than for the dynamic twenty-first century global society in which we now live?    A rethink of public restroom design would solve the dilemma that Lisa A. Fram outlines in  Men? Women? Parents Face Public Bathroom Dilemma: How old…

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Barb Lescher presents the PHLUSH Design Principles

Here in one of the cleanest cities of the world, PHLUSH Co-Founder Barbara Lescher presented Public Restroom Design for 21st Century US Cities: The PHLUSH Principles.   These design principles were passed by the Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood Association in June 2008 after extensive discussion in the community and by the neighborhood’s the Visions Committee.

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PHLUSH needs community support to take Portland experience to Singapore!

PHLUSH needs community support to take Portland experience to Singapore! Portland, Ore.  October 12, 2009.  Public Hygiene Lets Us Stay Human (PHLUSH) has accepted the invitation from the World Toilet Organization (WTO) to share Portland’s experience in increasing the availability of public restrooms.  As an all-volunteer grassroots group we’re now calling on the community to…

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