Defecation and urination are essential functions to continue living. Schweder describes the act as “a process where boundaries dissolve in which distinction loses clarity”. While we relieve ourselves, we are all equal. It is a leveller upon humankind. However, our cultural backgrounds make us different. Cultural ideology follows us even into the spaces we consider separate from the outside world, as the restroom. In Western societies, we are trained those excrements are a disgusting waste due to their historical connection to sickness, needing to be flushed away and tabooed.
The design of urban public restrooms in Berlin reflects this cultural attitude, originating from a monocultural perspective. Voices mirrored within the design are a solely male and Western-centred perspective – still aiming to speak for everyone. It is unacknowledged that contemporary citizens of Berlin are pluricultural. Defecation eventually must be performed as a natural process, yet the restroom design fails to respond to these various cultures.
Within this research project, culturally different restroom habits are explored, giving a platform to voices of otherness.
The research aims to answer the question:
“How can urban public restrooms be adapted to better serve a pluricultural society in contemporary Berlin? What are the implications for today’s design?”
With three different Berlin neighbourhoods as case studies, this project analyses the status quo of design through field research.
This approach is followed by human-centred research methods such as interviews combined with “Cultural animation”, an art-based methodology of knowledge co-production drawing on ordinary people’s experiences and creative abilities.
By the “process of making”, unheard voices are visualized and heard within a topic considered a taboo.
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