Bathrooms Around the World

In this post, I will connect my design process topic and my findings about bathroom around the world.

Throughout my research, I find that public bathrooms around the world are pretty much the same and it’s actually not so safe for the elders. However bathrooms in houses around the world may vary, depending on how many elders or children live in the house. Nonetheless, I find that some of the public bathroom like in Japan is much safer than public bathrooms in other Asian country, particularly Indonesia. Why?

(http://stevecronk.com/aberro-backup/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Restroom-Acrylic-4.jpg)

It is simply because Japan’s advanced technology allow them to utilize the technology to make everything easier. Lots of the Japan’s toilet strikingly has lots of buttons with several different functions, such as to flush, to wash, to adjust the water temperature for washing, to dry, to change the toilet paper, etc. All of the functions from the Electronic Japanese toilet can make everything easier for elders. Also, most of the Japanese bathrooms have bar handle that let people hold on to it while sitting down or getting up from the toilet.

Japanese Public Toilet

(http://www.japan-talk.com/images/jt/japanese-toilet-room-993.jpg)

Various Buttons with Different Functions

(http://www.japan-talk.com/images/jt/under-the-hood-993.jpg)

More interesting, Japan’s high technology allow elderly to have a robot helper that can aid them in the toilet, especially on lifting or moving the elders. Japan’s government is planning to subsidize the companies that are making the robot, in order to provide a low cost robot for elders at home as well as to ease the nursing care job workers (http://www.tokyotimes.com/low-cost-robots-to-assist-elderly-in-japan/). This is one of the unique solutions that can be included in our final design.

On the other hand, in Indonesia, not only that the public bathroom is lacking of safety but it also lacks in its hygiene. As an Indonesian myself, I have to be honest that I sometimes rather not use the public toilet in Indonesia because it’s neither clean nor safe. Most of the public bathrooms in Indonesia are wet bathrooms. So basically there are like no partition between the toilet seat as well as the squatting toilet with the shower. Due to the similar floor levels, the bathroom is always wet and this is so not safe for elders. Other than that there’s nothing more about Indonesian’s bathroom, because it’s so small and there are barely bar handle in any public bathroom.

Most Public Toilet in Indonesia – Squatting Seat

(http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/4950/275/1600/bpn3.jpg)

Wet Bathroom, No Partition between Shower and Toilet

(http://cdn2.agoda.net/hotelimages/487/487248/487248_13061916190013362023_STD.jpg)

So from this, it is easy to think that all bathrooms are similar, but actually it is not, average public bathrooms like in Japan are way more safe than the average public bathrooms in Indonesia.