why are toilets important?

Urinating, defecating, medical interventions, menstruating, changing diapers, freshening up, resting and many more, are all essential practices of life that humans undergo on a daily basis. Whether in public or private spaces, it is evident that “toilets provide a vehicle for exploring questions of ideology, power, embodiment, social justice, gender, race, class, sexuality and physical ability in ways that might actually have an impact on the quality of daily life”. (Gershenson and Penner 2009)

So, in reality, “Your Restroom is a Battleground” (‘Your Restroom Is a Battleground — Biennale Restrooms’, n.d.), and “peeing is political” (Autor*innenkollektiv Rosa Loo 2023; Baxane 2023; Kafer 2013).

Despite the increasing recognition of the importance of toilets, they remain a subject that is laughed at and linked to shame and taboo. These feelings of embarrassment make it difficult to discuss the topic seriously, especially in its political and social dimensions in order to engage change. (Barcan 2010; Richter 2020) However, we believe in the importance of de-stigmatizing the matter, of giving it its importance and deserved value and, furthermore, to open the discourse around it.

It is crucial for us to uncover the numerous power dynamics and exclusions that happen in the different spaces in order to be able to start imagining a more inclusive and welcoming city for all. As feminist geographer Leslie Kern put it: “In short, there is no single solution based solely on changes to the build environment. As with many other issues in cities and beyond, social change is also necessary.” (Kern 2020).

Yet, especially outside the home, it becomes challenging, if not impossible, for many people to find dignified, adequate, and free-of-charge spaces for their basic human needs. (Hamraie 2023; Johnson and Kitto 2019; Kern 2020; Lowe 2018)

“Public bathrooms are private spaces that reveal public truths” (Lowe 2018), and the public truth is that we still live in exclusive and unjust societies which is felt among others in the (in)accessibility and use of, as the British Toilet Association calls them, “away from home” toilets. The invisible power structures and hierarchies of today’s societies exclude marginalised people from everyday life, keeping them in vulnerable and precarious situations. It goes so far that these exclusive structures infiltrate even the private sphere, impacting how toilet accessibility and use is thought and normed in our homes.

Since 2022, on the instagram account @klo.stories, we have been documenting toilet situations, as well in public as in private spheres, that we observed and lived ourselves, as well as those sent to us. We are doing this in order to track down and uncover the barriers occurring in what are usually perceived as normal situations. We quickly realised that individual, uncomfortable and disturbing situations were mostly (re)productions of marginalisation, discriminations and social disadvantage- in short: exclusions. This occurs not only in the toilet facility itself but also in the (in)accessibility to it.

Combining our own empirical observations with literature research, we came across various authors from numerous disciplines and cultures who documented similar (personal) experiences and linked them to the larger social and political structures and struggles.

why did we create a website?

This project emerged as part of our bachelor thesis in architecture at the HafenCity University in Hamburg. As we gained a wider and holistic understanding on the complexity of the topic of toilets, we came to realise that there is a major lack of knowledge that needs to be addressed, before we can begin reimagining the spaces. As the toilet activist and geographic feminist researcher collective Rosa Loo fittingly notes that “many municipalities not only lack monetary and human resource, but also knowledge and know-how about an inclusive sanitary infrastructure”. (Autor*innenkollektiv Rosa Loo 2023).

It was therefore important to convey the complexities as well as the diversity present in both public and private spheres concerning toilets. We believe there are no single solutions for the design and conceptualisation of toilets; instead, solutions should arise from a sensitive and detailed analysis of each specific context. (Kern 2020)

Inspired by websites such as Forensic Architecture, a platform that created “an entire new academic field and emergent media practice” (‘Forensic Architecture → About Us’, n.d.) and Feral Atlas, a platform that “stretch[es] conventional notions of maps and mapping” and “draw[s] on the relational potential of the digital to offer new ways of analysing – and apprehending – the Anthropocene” (Tsing 2021), we wanted to imagine and explore the possibilities of a digital medium for this knowledge transmission and representation.

This led us to develop a playful and interactive website where visitors can navigate through a universe with four different worlds, uncovering the unspoken and invisible dimensions of toilets. To keep the topics accessible and relatable, we use individual, personal stories gathered from our own experiences, stories by those around us and our literature research. We based our approach on the concept of ethnofiction, a subfield of ethnography that employs storytelling and first-person autobiography to communicate ethnological truths. French author and ethnographer Marc Augé used this method in his book “Journal d’un SDF”, where he imagines five months in the life of an unhoused person. He said: “The ethnofictional person who observes himself today, [...], reveals the madness of the world”. (Augé 2011)

Using this method, we created different fictional personalities to narrate stories based on the anonymous stories and facts we gathered during our research. We attempted to narrate them in an accessible and easy-to-understand manner, to foster empathic understanding in our visitors, bringing them closer to the everyday struggles of people who do not fit in societal norms. The personal narratives are linked to broader social and political concepts. Visitors of the website can then explore the topics and different levels of depth at their own pace and interest, to gain a deeper understanding of the power structures underlying these personal experiences. Additionally, we seek to present existing literature on the topic in a more accessible and comprehensible language or representation.

We have made every effort to be representative in both the language we use and the visual representations we create. We believe that maintaining an open mind and inclusivity are an ongoing learning process. While we are aware that we may still have blind spots, we are eager to learn and grow. If you have insights to share or topics to suggest, please feel free to contact us!

who is behind this project?

The team behind this project consists of Greta Ghanem and Marie Steinmetz. We met in 2019 in Hamburg at the beginning of our Bachelor in Architecture at HafenCity University. After working together on several projects, we developed a common critical perspective on architecture, space and their connections to social and political hierarchies, and the hope to find a way to create more sustainable, inclusive and feminist cities. Our shared interest in spaces of intimacy, especially toilets, and the many invisible structures hidden behind them brought us together for our thesis and inspired this project. Our work has been supervised by Professor Sabine Hansmann, specialising in Architecture, Space and Society and architect Marieke Behne.

As cisgendered, white women living in Central European countries, a world that is designed to fit able, “sealed-off” (Barcan 2010) bodies, we are aware that our experiences and perspectives on toilets are limited to our identities and privileges. Our personal struggles regarding toilet use and access include issues such as menstruation, long lines in front of female restrooms, public peeing and lack of adequate infrastructure in the public space. In order to broaden our perspective on the topic, we turned to our surroundings and the literature.

Although we have made efforts to research and raise awareness on topics beyond our Western viewpoints, we acknowledge that there is still much work to be done in uncovering colonial and patriarchal structures, cultural differences in both design, use and practices, and ecological impacts that we haven’t addressed in our work. This project, born out of a bachelor thesis, faced time and resource constraints that led us to initially focus on our immediate surroundings and culture. However, we are eager to expand our knowledge by incorporating the work of researchers raising struggles, practices and use of other cultures and uncovering the impressive diversity on this topic. This project is an ongoing investigation, and we will continually strive to add more depth and perspectives as time and resources allow.