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Whitefella Australian learning how to be gwai lo (鬼佬) in Hong Kong

Saturday, October 29, 2011

De Natura Lavatorium

Just a quick post today, as I am still mulling over a longer one. Making good on my promise that this blog would talk about design, I was pleased to come across this very stylish hand basin in the washrooms at the Hong Kong Museum of Art, on the waterfront at Tsim Sha Tsui.
I had always thought of Norway as the epitome of child-centred societies, and perhaps they do a better job across the board, but if you just want to look at the material culture of this one public toilet, then you'd have to say that either the designer, or the ones preparing the brief, should get top marks for considering the needs of those small in size or age.
My curiosity was piqued firstly by the sign on the door. Now once upon a time I would not have paid attention to the signs on the toilet doors, but after a very memorable Women's Studies lecture about fifteen years ago, I have never looked at a toilet door the same again. I could go on at length about how gender is 'created' in both the signs themselves, and the normative choice we must make, out of two very limiting options, whenever we use a non-unisex bathroom, but I will leave it at that, for the sake of brevity and sanity (however I will say thank-you to Dr Annamaria Jagose for one of the few genuinely memorable lectures of my educational life). So back to the sign, or signs (because they always come in matching pairs); they were fairly typical stick figures (i.e. two generic humans, one in pants/trousers, and one in a skirt), but on each sign there were two figures, one larger and one smaller. A nice touch. I suspect you are supposed to read this as good for both adults and children (they being a large category of generally small people), but really it could just as easily be a shout-out to anyone of small stature.
And in a rare instance of cohesive design, this small-friendly sign was borne out by the design of the rest of the bathrooms, which were organised to make everything easy to access, whatever your height. As an added bonus, the sinks were a sterling example of practical industrial design, with clean lines, good materials, and all teamed with water pressure moderate enough for washing without precipitating a fountain!
If only all toilets could be so satisfying...

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