When I was in the navy, traveling to countries bordering the Baltic or the Mediterranean, I began to make observations of the culture. You could try to classify outgoing cultures, family-oriented, etc, etc. Lots of ways to slice the pie. I stumbled on a different, and more objective means of discerning cultural attributes. As crass it may first seem, I looked at bathroom design, and specifically, toilets.

First, my sample is, of course, limited to men’s bathrooms. However, even in that limited sample, you can start to look at some common variables. Are there privacy shields between urinals? Do the urinals extend to the floor? Do they have deodorizers in them? How clean are they? How tight are the toilet stalls? How low are they? Do they include sanitary guards for the seats? Auto flush? Bidets or no?

You’re rolling your eyes right now. You are asking yourself–”what does this say about the cultures?” I think you can break down the elements, and if you have a large enough sample, make inferences about what the culture values. How designed are the bathrooms? Or are they utilitarian, or at worst, forgotten necessities?

I used to sketch the layout, shapes, and design elements where I traveled. I’ve lost those records to many moves and many boxes that accumulate. But rather than focusing on the insights I could generate from those drawings, I’d like to push myself to find common cultural items — the more mundane the better — and break them apart, and compare and contrast them. As I get deeper into some global client work, the more interested I become, again, in understanding cultures — what unites us and what defines us.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Thought, Culture. It is further classified using the following tags anthropology, culture, Design, ethnography, global, research, Thought, toilets and travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.