Links.net: Justin Hall's personal site growing & breaking down since 1994

watch overshare: the links.net story contact me

scandinavian toilets and urinals!

Scandinavian toilets are just different enough to be strikingly weird. The bowl shaft is longer and narrower than that of american pottery;
not that the nordic toilets are taller, but the base porcelain allows a greater distance for doo drop.

The net effect, corroborated by at least two swedes, is that often shits will splash. Svante says that's cuz I'm an amateur, but I don't think one should have to wiggle and target the output of one's arse to hit the slopes and not the deadly dampening depths below.

toilet Why, in a country of remarkable design articulation is the speech of the sphincter so poorly protected? Svante says these toilets use a far more environmentally friendly amount of water; it's true that americans like to flush big. But I wonder if the intended function of the deep drop isn't to distance our bodies from the product of our consumption. Witness Svante's horror when i proposed that the same water conserving toilets be constructed shallower to avoid ass-wetting: "oh no, then I'd be bathing in shit!".

So what some swedes do to avoid being splashed is lay a bed of toilet paper in the water before they move bowels. This may keep a butt dry, but it's just a waste of different resources!

Toilet Rocker Switch The best eco-toilet technology hands down i saw on my return to Sweden in march '98: the toilet tank top had a rocker switch, with a full darkened circle on one side, a darkened half-circle on the other. The function was clear, regardless of language - this was an interactive toilet according to excretion: rinse away a little pee, or seriously flush away some shit. Now that's design!

On the other hand Swedish urinals are brilliant for their beauty. Few urinals in America are remarkable; every once in a while in Florida you find one where you can piss on a community service message like "say no to drugs" written on the urinal cake, and brought to you Swisher; but here in Sweden

Urinal Urinal Urinal

These urinals are a vision of simplicity in parabolic curvature. The urinals glide out of the wall like pods for pee: something simple, streamlined, and Star Wars, all at the same time.

Toilets in Japan

sweden | Scandinavia | trip | life

justin's links by justin hall: contact