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Today I decided that since I was in Kendal I would visit the newly opened and much awaited multi million pound development "K Village" which opened a week ago. I needed the loo when I arrived, so since they are adjacent to the entrance decided to pay a visit. The loo is a size smaller than the average living room, I walked for what seemed like ages to reach it, along a glass sided corridor which fronts onto the main road (full public view), once inside the loo there are five urinal bowls without divisions, and three cubicles, one bowl and one cubicle were "out of order", (yes, the place has only been open a week)! Incidentally there is one lift, (yes, you probably guessed it! "Out of order"!
Now, I would guess that the architect certainly does not suffer from AP, but I wonder what kind of impression I would have of the facilities if he was a sufferer? It certainly couldn't have been worse. Another golden opportunity missed?
In Chichester, where I live, they are now building much better toilets. These have separate and lockable rooms for both sexes as well as a set of urinals for those men who do not suffer from AP. I find that many other towns, certainly around the south of England seem to be replacing their old (and usually horribly smelly)toilet faciilities with these new style unisex toilets. They are also kept immaculately by a private company.
Thanks for the support! The best toilets I have ever seen (like you say - unisex) were in a furiture chain call Ilva, sadly no longer operating in the UK.
If developers realised that they are potentially ostrasizing 7% of the population they may take toilets a bit more seriously. I once asked an architect why more priority was not given to toilets, and he said that clients did not normally give them a suitable budget for anything more than the basics.
The Weatherspoon chain however seem to relaise that toilets count.
I too popped along to look at this new development, and having seen your comments, thought I would check out the toilets as well. My reaction was not the same as yours, which shows how personal such reactions can be.
You said in part: “The loo is a size smaller than the average living room, ……, once inside the loo there are five urinal bowls without divisions, and three cubicles, one bowl and one cubicle were "out of order", (yes, the place has only been open a week)!”
I thought it was quite a spacious room; and there are now divisions between urinals. My view was: on entry the left hand wall had five washbasins, then a partition followed by five urinals. Men washing or drying hands could not see those at the urinals and vice versa: this is major plus point. Being on the same wall meant there was no line of sight via mirror reflection either: again a major plus point. The four cubicles were opposite the urinals. I personally felt comfortable. Having five urinals instead of say four, meant that three users would have a spare urinal between each of them. I did not check out the spacing, nor the cubicles. Will do next time. It almost felt as if the designer had read the UKPT’s Design Guidelines for Public Toilets, and gone a long way to accommodate them. I’ll get this document added to the website for you to read. In the meantime checkout the extract below of the UKPT’s Draft Guidelines for Public Toilets.
3.3 Principles and rationale - urinals
a) Use bowl urinal, not troughs. No-one likes their difficulty in starting to void to be evidenced by the lack of fluid in the trough. Nor do they wish to see other people’s urine. (tick)
b) spacing to be such as to avoid the feeling of touching elbow to elbow: the recommendation is 800mm. An alternative is to consider same spacing as cubicles as per the Bog Standard School proposal. (not checked)
c) encourage a feeling of personal space and visual privacy by providing privacy screens between urinals. The bottom of the screen should be no more than 500mm off the floor, and to top to be a minimum height of 1700mm above the floor. (screens provided though not to this height, but effective)
d) provide visual privacy by using privacy screening between the urinal area and other areas e.g. wash basins, hand dryers, entrance door; the sizing to be as above. (tick)
e) Hand dryers and towels to be separated from urinals by 800mm, along with a privacy screen. (tick)
3.4 Principles and rationale – layout of male toilet
The area behind men standing at urinals should not be a gangway, nor an area for circulation e.g. a hand washing or drying area. Instead the preference is for the entrance to be into an area with cubicles on one side, and hand washing and drying on the other. Walking through this area is to lead to the far part of the room where the urinals are located, on both sides. Screening between the two areas to be a minimum of 1700mm.
Where hand washing and drying cannot be separated in this way, but has to be level with the urinals, then a 1700mm plus high screen should separate them: see JDWetherspoon pub in Macclesfield, and the Waterhouse in Manchester. (tick)
In large facilities urinals should be grouped in odds numbers e.g. fives or threes, with further high level screening between the groups. (tick)
The "walk of fame" is also a very big negative for anyone with AP, greatly increasing stress levely bofore you reach the loos, the "walk of fame" - before anyone asks - is the long glass corridor you have to endure before reaching the toilets. Thousands of people pass that point by car daily on the public roadway to which the corridor is adjacent, and where the traffic comes to a halt at the lights, they can clearly see who is going to use the loo. Relatives, friends, work colleagues, anyone infact could be aware you have gone to the loo. Even my partner, who is not AP, but is obvoiusly very AP aware, commented that would be difficult for some people. Maybe the specification could be amended to cover that in future? In the meantime (in my opinion) we have a multi million pound shopping scheme, with toilets done on the cheap, (to maximise profit), which is partly out of order already, and which we will be stuck with for a long time (for those who choose to go there).