Despite all the renovation, the newly installed 2023 toilets don't look that different from the ones it replaced.
Electronic bidet toilets should really be the norm by now. Sad that the expectations haven't changed.
RIP WC
11–20 of 21 posts
Re: RIP WC
#12These recently reatored art deco toilets in Paris look very smart:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/18/restored-paris...
And the toilets near the old Humber ferry pier in my home city of Hull are pretty impressive:
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/lonel...
Unlike the ones in Paris, I've had the pleasure of visiting these.
Re: RIP WC
#13There is also the legendary "unofficial website of the paid public toilet on Grabin's street of the city of Korolev" that has been around since 2001. http://arch.ksys.ru/tualet.html Translated: https://arch-ksys-ru.translate.goog/tualet.html?_x_tr_sch=ht...
I will note that down for the next time I'm in this part of Korolev and need a toilet. Once was enough.
Re: RIP WC
#14I live locally and have used those toilets a number of times. I can’t say I’d be sad for improvement as they were pretty grim.
Re: RIP WC
#15Cheap, generic, ultra-mass-produced and under-designed (or crap-designed) seems to be the order of business these days.
Re: RIP WC
#16What this shows is just how important it is to get photos of as many local places as you can in your area and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. I've been doing this and have been making a solid attempt at documenting South West Sydney (focusing on the City of Liverpool currently).
You can see the results via Wikishootme:
https://wikishootme.toolforge.org/#lat=-33.918668614845444&l...
Re: RIP WC
#17I get the nostalgia about mosaic and all, but these open-style urinals is literally stuff of my nightmares. I am from a backwater town in then second world country and those urinals and latrines in public toilets made them filthy and stinking to high heavens. Not the worst of childhood traumas but I still have a recurring night dream of going into a public toilet and not finding a single approachable spot.
Re: RIP WC
#18I get the nostalgia about mosaic and all, but these open-style urinals is literally stuff of my nightmares. I am from a backwater town in then second world country and those urinals and latrines in public toilets made them filthy and stinking to high heavens. Not the worst of childhood traumas but I still have a recurring night dream of going into a public toilet and not finding a single approachable spot.
I think the question usually with these situations is can they be renovated in a way that retains the aesthetic or positive features of the original while addressing problems? In this case just hypothetically it might have meant keeping the urinal style but extending dividers downward, or spacing or something. But it would have necessitated custom work and some design problem solving.
Re: RIP WC
#19Old urinals in the midlands (UK) had a bumble bee emblem you could aim at, but why a bee espcially, seemed odd. Later found out. In latin Bee = Apis. Hilarous innit.
Edit - wikipedia's even got an article on these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urinal_target
Re: RIP WC
#20Old stuff is cool, but we shouldn't keep old things around just for the sake of it. Old stuff tends to be harder to maintain, not meet modern expectations, be less energy efficient, be incompatible with newer things, potentially toxic or dangerous, etc. If you plan to actually use the old stuff, then it will gradually wear out, and the expense of repairing a crack in a 100 year old thing tends to be higher than repai…
I appreciate you’re making a generalisation rather than stating a fact, but a lot of your points could just as easily be untrue as they are correct. It really depend on the item.
For example a lot of older stuff can be easier to maintain if the modern counterpart has some kind of electronic part that wasn’t in the original. And plenty of modern things aren’t made with the same longevity as older things.
> not meet modern expectations
I don’t see that as reason not to use old stuff in itself. If you’re changing something purely because of fashion then that’s a terrible reason to get rid of something older. But if there is another measurable differentiator then I’d see that as the reason rather than “expectations”.
I guess my point here isn’t that I disagree with you per se, just that I’d be weary of citing “expectations” without breaking down what those expectations are (in any particular case).
> be less energy efficient
We also need to be careful here too because the impact of manufacturing and shipping new things, plus the impact of disposing old things might still work out greater than the impact of using that older thing for longer.
> and the expense of repairing a crack in a 100 year old thing tends to be higher than repairing/replacing something modern.
I’ve owned plenty of modern things that were impossible to repair once they developed a small crack. And things that should be easier to repair than they are because they manufactures have decided they don’t want people fixing their own stuff.