Monday, November 3, 2008

Why Public Bathrooms?!?!?

We chose public bathrooms, a unique “very public” space for a “very private” use, making it an interesting and challenging public space for study and observation. After comparing a number of public bathrooms in NY, we chose the Bethesda Fountain bathrooms for our project. This location is ideal for public bathrooms; it is in one of the most central areas in NY and is visited on a daily basis by a variety of people. During the observation we found out that people try to avoid any kind of interaction in this space and attempt to get out of there as soon as possible. This observation encouraged us to experiment; we attempted to make people stay longer in the unpleasent public bathrooms, and encouraged interaction with the space and it’s users.

The process involved many different iterations and we met with numerous challenges on the way.

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