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Bathroom Design:
Designing Private Spaces in Public Venues

by Francesco Lucchese
architect, designer and lecturer at the Faculty of Design of Politecnico di Milano,
with the cooperation of Nicola R.Ticozzi, General Manager of the course in
New Entertainment Design by Poli.Design.

Building a symbolic universe:
experiential planning and marketing
In a society such as the one we are living in, which is characterised by a superabundance of goods, services and most of all information, it is no more sufficient to communicate the existence of a product or give information about what the product or service is able to offer; on the contrary it becomes necessary to build around the product a “symbolic universe” of which the consumer-client is not only a spectator but can turn to it as a reference point and something he can recognise with.

In reply to such a need there is a progressive turning towards a new conception of marketing that is defined as “aesthetic” and experiential”, with the goal of making the consumer experience physical and emotional sensations while experimenting the product.

In the emerging market of experiences what is sold are not services nor goods, but memory, and this means:
• sensorializing the product in order to transform it into the means by which offer the client an experience able to stimulate sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch through a synaesthetic mediation. The simplest approach to enrich the product in experiential terms consists in the adding of elements that intensify the customer’s sensations while using it;
• proposing an experience inspired by a theme, the most adequate to the character of the company producing it;
• involve the consumer-client by making him participate actively: no more passive, unidirectional relations, but rather a progressive involvement of the client in the offer’s creation process and representation.
This approach, which is typical of experiential marketing, is not limited to the relation with the products, but more often concerns the places we choose to frequent, and implies a basically changed attitude and new creative and conceptual responsabilities for the designer.

The influence of entertainment venues and new scenarios
A key element that must be considered to understand the recent evolution of the bathroom ambient is the influence coming from the world of night entertainment venues.
Since a few years ago Night and Evening can be considered a testing and launch laboratory of design and planning trends that are destined to spread also in other very different fields and times.

Night, evening and entertainment. Time and its spaces.
During the last years the Night and the way it is lived, interpreted, “consumed” and the contexts of night entertainment have undergone a profound evolution that has been the starter of changes within very different aesthetic, cultural and economical fields.

The new concept of “Night”
From a simple fraction of the day, which is free from work or study duties and can be devoted to rest or recreation, to youth and young adults the Night has become by and by the real “core of life”, the metaphorical and real moment around which organise the day, the emotional and vital centre of gravity on which project and live the best part of the day and the self.
The researchers that have closely followed this process have pointed out that Night has proven to be a “free territory”, or at least freer, from the requests and models of the daytime world, a territory where to feel free to invent and project more creative self models, more exclusive and refined on an aesthetic and expressive level. Furthermore the Night is also the space in which these models are then compared and shared.

Time: Night, a window open onto the freedom of choice.
As time passes by, the year 2000 can be considered the starting point of this evolution, a further change can be perceived: this complex of values attributed to the Night, that at first belong exclusively to the latest time section of the day, namely from 11pm. or midnight on, extends to a longer, middle and late time which extends from 6pm. until early in the morning.
The night, with its contents of contact with other people, discovery of new things, availability of personal time and the consequent research for the best way and place to live it, starts very early, at the end of the working time.
At the same time customers age-range widens: they are not only young people of 17-25 years of age, as it happened when the meeting venues were night clubs, but also young adults and adults between 30 and 45 years of age, who right after their work open a free window of variable width and length, of regained time, where new socialization habits, behaviours and aesthetic needs are born and find room, which in a broader way than before involve consumptions and places where this window of time, sociality and pleasure is lived.

Space: the new role of Entertainment places
From time to space, or rather spaces, the places where the night is lived: during the last decade aggregation venues have become one of the key contexts where trends are born and take off to become fashions that are accepted and followed by a continuously wider public.
Researchers have pointed out that the process is quite precise and develops through three stages. It is in the aggregation venues, in the freer dimension constituted by the night, that a creative concept can be proposed and launched.
If it is accepted it will be progressively shared by other people and will become what in this first phase is defined “a trend”.
In the second stage the trend can be progressively shared by a higher number of people who are ready to welcome innovations and “spread’ them around, and it is through them that a trend becomes a “fashion”.

In the third stage the fashion that is shared by a higher and undifferentiated public looses its most markedly innovative and creative content to become a “consumption habit”, an aesthetic or behavioural code.
The process of trends starts, at least during the last decade, from night leisure venues and it reaches daily life where they are adopted also by people not directly frequenting night venues, but it is nevertheless influenced by them in their aesthetic, consumption and behavioural choices.
Night entertainment venues are containers and mirrors, and often anticipators of the public’s taste, new forms of sociality and the aesthetic expectations of their customers, and for this reason have undergone and undergo constant and revealing changes.
In order to “host” the widening of the concept of Night, which has now become a long continuum Evening-Night, and the customers increase in number and type, entertainment spaces change as well as the way they are designed and furnished, the musical offer and fruition, the very same musical genres; what changes are the venues’ functions and the type of offer, the models of social relation in which the public identifies with: from the huge clubs of a few years ago to today’s DJ Bars of design, the change is significant.

Atmopsheres, multisensoriality and functional areas
Also for these reasons during the last years the outline of public venues has greatly changed: every day in big cities venues of a new conception are born, such as DJ bars, show restaurants, ethnic bars, lounge clubs, venues with a strong aesthetic characterization, where atmosphere, taste and design are decisive and their key words are sensations, emotion and multisensoriality.
It is fundamental to convey the idea of novelty and renovation: therefore also largely renowned clubs are compelled to constantly renovate their structures.
In a quite short period of time the most successful entertainment venues present themselves with an ideal look to surprise and be remembered; every detail, including the functional areas, are reconsidered as an integral part of the venue’s aesthetic character, and the toilettes area as well as is often linked to the style of the halls.

The public toilet as experiential spectacularity

While thinking about water and more metaphorically its holder, the sea, we can immediately realize that all our five senses cited above (hearing, smell, taste, touch, sight) are particularly involved in a synaesthetic experience.
Actually water senses suggest projects in which colour, smell and temperature will represent straight away the recognizable scenery of water.
The bathroom is the place in which, like only a few others, the formal aspect, trends and new materials must cope with the functional aspect: an ambient in which many services must coexist and be shared in small spaces, and an integration of functions is proper.
Home Toilet and Public Toilet
It is necessary to distinguish between home toilet and public toilet.
The home toilet reflects a condition in which the individual wants to feel in total ease and relaxation with his body; it is a prolonged and tranquil experience that is done not only for need or necessity, but for the mere pleasure and privacy with the self. Consequently, the sensorial activities involved are several and intimate: the ambient must be comfortable, relaxing, cosy but most of all “personalised” exactly to enable a condition of harmony with the environment and obviously to create a relaxing atmosphere.
Therefore the reference points in home toilet planning are found in wellness centres as places dedicated to relaxation for the cure of stress, and it is mainly this that the concept of sensorial harmony is associated with: all five senses are involved to create a synaesthetic ambient.
On the contrary the public toilet is, as the term itself points out, an ambient for everybody, where many people meet and collide: this makes it necessary to “rethink” spaces not only in functional but also expressive terms, in order to offer a qualitative design result.
The public toilet offers a short experience in which the senses are involved in a different and rapid way.
Actually there is a strong visual, auditive and tactile involvement and conditioning which is of a different nature than in a home toilet.
Public toilets are therefore called to be used by many people in a very delicate function-space-personal privacy relation.
Consequently a minimum, essential privacy must be designed and harmoniously integrated with in rest of the space.
The project of a public toilet must surely privilege the emotion of its content to make it a protagonist by using other elements that must be skilfully designed for a correct fruition of the space.
Distribution of space, surface materials defining the volumes, use of colour, adequate and functional fittings, they all become the core of the project, the ingredients to be mixed in order to obtain the right dose of spectacularity.
The lighting project is particularly important. In fact light acquires new wider meanings that the functionality of a correct lighting, creating therefore new sceneries and appeals for the user.

The new task of the designer
The designer’s task is therefore to create an ambient strongly linked to the rest of the venue, that shouldn’t be too “relaxing” otherwise it would fall back into the home toilet codes, but should be able to involve all the senses in such a way to generate a strong reaction in the individual, thus becoming unforgettable.
The public toilet’s functional aspect should be prior to the setting: shape, materials and new trends should always prevail and be exalted by the surrounding ambient.
It is clear that the spectacularity is a very important strategic, temporary and immediate element that the public venue must deal with, in general and in particular in the public toilet: the impact with the surrounding environment must be therefore the first factor to be considered in order to make the memory of the place unforgettable, and the services offered are an added value that conveys renown to the venue.