Manifesto Multilinko
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Sunday, March 18, 2007
you're in luck with the modern bathroom

The home urinal. It is possible I have eccentric areas of expertise. But I hate inefficiency.

As I read this story, it goes something like:

In Canada - sold as eco-green friendly waterless efficient option.

In USA - sold as high-end luxury accessory for the men's wing of your giant house.

Which is maybe all you need to know about the difference between Canada and the USA.

I wrote a bit about water-efficient bathroom design on March 26, 2004.

Or you can check my wc category.

Anyway, there was an article in yesterday's Citizen: Stand and deliver by Kelvin Browne (National Post).

Designers are getting requests for home urinals. Ask the leading style gurus about them and their responses aren't embarrassed titters or stunned silence but lists of projects for which home urinals are on the shopping list.

...

But, of course, in the world of design, even a urinal must be a thing of beauty. "The urinals you use in a home environment don't have to be the ones you see in public washrooms," Bonnell says. "For example, Philippe Starck has created urinals where their smaller scale and design finesse means they don't seem out of place in residential settings."

As it turns out, quite a few manufacturers of bathroom fixtures have picked up on a trend for home urinals.

The model they picture is the Villeroy & Boch Oblic, which looks pretty good. Good luck trying to find anything on their site though, which seems to be broken in various ways.

Anyway, here's an image of it borrowed from Trendir.



I don't know what tech it uses.

The Citizen had a piece last year on waterless

"Once when we get past the old mentality that water cleans urinals and people test them, we find they sell themselves," said Mr. Spagnolo, operations manager for Water Matrix, which distributes urinals in Canada for a California firm called Waterless Co.

Waterless urinals were one of many resource-saving products -- from greenery-lined roofing to nature-mimicking carpets -- on display yesterday at the National Green Building Conference and Exposition.

Oddly, women quoted seem to find the whole idea unhygenic.
Um, let's see, what is cleaner:
1) Pouring blue dye down a funnel directly into the drain or
2) Pouring blue dye into a shallow bowl full of water, that partially aeresolizes as it violently swirls down the drain.

Yes, aeresolizes.

An article from the March 16, 2007 Florida Sun Sentinel is an example of the uphill battle that home urinals may face in the US, because, shall we say, Americans have issues.

Our hang-ups date back to our Puritanical past and Victorian notions, according to Thompson. We don't put men and women authors in separate bookcases anymore or feel like we have to cover the legs of furniture at the risk of arousing impure or arousing thoughts. But we aren't as sophisticated as we would like to believe.

Oh for god's sake, grow up.

Another typical American article is in the Chicago Tribune (New York Times News Service) - For the high-end bath, something unexpected

Kathy Dorfman, 36, spent $10,000 on a one-of-a-kind urinal hand-sculptured from porcelain by Clark Sorensen, a San Francisco artist, in the form of a pink orchid and gave it to her husband as a gift. The couple plan to install it in the master bathroom in their 11th-floor penthouse in Edgewater, N.J., which is decorated in white and lilac marble.

Oh for heaven's sake, I just want to save some water, I don't need a solid gold pissoir. Rich people are idiots.

Just to go full circle, Kelvin Browne's article I suspect was inspired by the NY Times News Service one, since it ends with similar information.

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