Bathrooms for Living

The bathroom is the most important room in any house. It is the one place where people can be nude, solitary and mute for any protracted period. It is a refuge for all reasons, serving also as laundry room, solarium, greenhouse and primping parlor, a place for delousing pets, deep thinking and stashing wet umbrellas. Yet even in its more basic functions, the contemporary American bathroom is "hopelessly antiquated and inadequate," in the view of Alexander Kira, an architect and Cornell professor who has immersed himself in the subject for 17 years. Indeed, he points out, the Western loo has changed little since the late 19th century, when Thomas Crapper of London patented his flush toilet--and thereby insinuated himself into colloquial English.

In The Bathroom (Viking), a newly updated and expanded version of an urbane study he published in 1966, Kira argues that the standard bathroom is uncomfortable, unsanitary and unsafe. The average 5-ft. by 7-ft. model is badly lit and ventilated; it seldom provides adequate storage and counter space for all the tubes, jars, bottles, blades, brushes and electrical appliances that have become the indispensable artifacts of ablution. Clearly, if cleanliness is next to godliness, it is also next to impossible in bathrooms that lack "facilities for perineal hygiene," meaning bidets. Moreover, some 275,000 people in the U.S. are injured each year while using ill-designed tubs and showers.

Wider Seat. Kira concludes from continuing research that the standard toilet is "the most ill-suited fixture ever designed," whether for comfort or efficient elimination. The whatchamacallit should be from 5 in. to 9 in. lower and shaped so that the occupant could take the natural squatting position of primitive man; it should also have a wider padded seat and incorporate two water jets for cleansing. Many washbasins, he finds, are built "so low as to be ideal only for small children." He proposes a contoured bowl, 36 in. high, deep at one end, wide and shallow at the other, with a fountain spout that can be used for mouth washing and shampooing.

The most frustrating fixture of all, in Kira's view, is the tub-shower. "The only substantive reason for taking a tub bath is to relax," he maintains, "and yet it is precisely this that the vast majority of tubs have not permitted the user to do." The tub should be longer (6 ft., v. the standard 5 ft.) and wider, have a contoured back to fit the curvature of the spine, a comfortable place to sit while foot washing and shampooing, and a hand spray for rinsing. Showers should be larger, have continuous wrap-around grab-bars and different-shaped handles located away from the water source so that the soap-blinded bather can adjust water temperatures by feel.

Why do we have such minimal, dismal bathrooms? Mainly, Kira contends, because we "have allowed our taboos and guilts to interfere with the fullest development and realization of our physical and mental well-being." Builders, eager to skimp on space, seldom conceive of the bathroom as an integrated system like the modern kitchen.

It was not always so. Princes and potentates once treated the toilet seat as an extension of the throne; it was from the gilded cabinet that France's Louis XIV announced his engagement to Mme. de Maintenon. (Even Lyndon Johnson was not above conducting affairs of state while moving his bowels.) Indeed, there are few places so conducive to intellectual exercise as a well-appointed bathroom. Lord Chesterfield advised his son that he "knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the call of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments." Thousands of monastery manuscripts found a dual purpose ending in the toilets of the rich.

Shower Machine. As Americans have become increasingly frank about sex, Kira believes, they are also becoming more candid about the once unmentionable functions of the bathroom. "Whereas the '50s and the '60s were the era of the kitchen and the family room," he predicts, "the '70s will be the era of the bathroom and body care." The Japanese, who have always had a highly civilized attitude toward hygiene, already have a design for the ultimate shower machine: the bather selects the desired water temperature and soap, pushes a button and is then soaked, washed with suds produced by ultrasonic waves, rinsed, massaged with rubber balls and finally dried with heat lamps. A big step toward civilized johnmanship is the "AD 2000 Comfort Control Center," a prototype built by Olsonite of Detroit. Mounted on a conventional toilet, it provides a tilting, vibrating back, reading light, ashtray, radio, TV, tuner and bidet attachment. To bring the bathroom back into the family--and vice versa--a West German firm has designed a Wohnbad, or living bath, to be shared by all. It boasts chairs, rugs, paintings, sun lamps and hair dryers, TV, bookshelves, sauna, telephone, refrigerator, bar and coffee maker. It does not stock Latin poetry, but the toilet paper has English-language lessons printed on it.

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