Step 1: stand facing downhill or stand on a flat surface.
Step 2: if wearing zippered pants, unzip fly and take crotch of underwear to side. If wearing pants with an elastic waist, lower the waist of underwear and pants in front (don’t pull pants all the way down). If wearing a skirt (this is recommended for beginners), lift skirt in front and either lower waistband of underwear or pull crotch of underwear to side.
Step 3: use both or just one hand to spread your labia and pull up. I recommend using both hands to start out with because it offers a greater amount of control.
Step 4: begin peeing hard and then back off a little bit to minimize drips and spraying. End hard.

Tips:
I recommend practicing in the shower and at home before you attempt in public. It took me about five months to learn it and now, two months later, I have mastered it. Just so you know, you will fail the first few times you attempt it (that’s why you try it in the bath first) but whatever happens, NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER SURRENDER because the frustration and clean-up is ALL worth it. If this helps, you might consider that the amount of time it takes you to learn it is less than the amount of time it takes for guys to. Just always THINK POSITIVE and imagine how awed people will be by your talent. When they waste time scrambling to find toilet paper and a place to hide, all you have to do is turn away from prying eyes and cooly relieve yourself without exposing any more skin than men do (less, in fact because nothing sticks out. Even if people see you from the side, they will not see anything important!). Have fun, keep dreaming, and above all, THINK POSITIVE!

Being in public is a little risky. Being in public with your pants down is a bit riskier. But we feel that the presence of others is, in fact, safer than the absence of others. And we predict – though this has yet to be tested – that most men and most women will be on their best behaviors in this new scenario where they share the bathroom with the opposite sex. Co-ed bathrooms in college dorms – including toilets as well as showers – have largely settled into praxis without fanfare because after an initial hesitation, the ruffled feathers settle back down.

I agree with Peaches that women’s safety matters. We think we’ve offered a set of designs that addresses these concerns. In the case of the fully attended bathroom, we believe our combination of architectural and social components offers greater protection for bathroom goers (not only from violence but also in case of health emergency) than do traditional segregated bathrooms.

If we haven’t got it quite right, do post a comment.

As for restrooms, aren’t public restrooms in France unisex. I recall going down into one guarded by some old crone jingling her centimes in an ashtray (hint, hint) and looking in vain for a sign that said Hommes. Also, these days a lot of college dorm restrooms are unisex. (I assumed that for women in dorms, the problem with unisex bathrooms was not modesty but cleanliness. Men are pigs.) And I assume you know that blogger Dan Myers has a more-than-passing interest in urinal sociology.

>> I did not know about the urinal blog, but here’s a link. <<

Dan Myers’ Urinal Blog

I’m glad that my thoughts were helpful. Like I said, I really like the idea and think that it is great that you are working on it!

I’ll take a stab at your questions, although I should note that I never made it beyond architecture school. I couldn’t take designing and building models – the combination of my inherent procrastination and perfectionism made architecture somewhat of a poor fit for my personality =) The biggest thing about the plumbing is that you want to be able to run pipes through the walls from floor-to-floor. You could do something really creative where the piping on each side become the brackets that hold the mirrors in place (a la Pompidou Centre), but that would make it less of a prototype, which is my understanding is more of what you want. Or, you might be able to expand the space where the mirror is to be about 14”-16” wide and run the piping through a wall in the center. I think that would also help with the barrier. I actually think that you might have a little bit more space than you are giving yourself because it doesn’t look like your bathroom would take up as much room as two bathrooms (men and women) or three (men, women, unisex/handicap/family). If that were the case, then it probably wouldn’t be a problem to run the piping through a wall that could be carried up in elevation. I don’t think that the plumbing is as big of a deal in the arena because so much of that construction is custom spec anyway, that it wouldn’t be a substantial cost to add plumbing, although it might be useful to make the wall holding the driers a little bit wider to run electrical/plumbing so that there wasn’t such a large expanse (the length of the bathroom) without it. Also, for the arena, I actually think if you just got rid of the last sink on the left, then the sight-line problems would disappear.

On the sinks – I think that many men are largely disgusting, but I like the idea of putting the sinks in the way of the exit to encourage sanitary behavior. I wonder if some kind of creative signage might help with hand-washing. Also, having ample soap would also help I think, but there is no amount of design that will help that, I’m afraid. I have actually been to some old-school stadiums where there were big trough-like sinks with foot-pedals and I seem to think that it actually helped with hand washing, but that is entirely anecdotal on my part.

On the visual leakage, I think that a certain amount is okay. On the other hand, I think that it would be difficult for people to buy-in initially without some sense of privacy (old habits die hard). I think that it is especially important for the office prototype because it would be really uncomfortable to be seen by someone who I work with and have a relationship with (as opposed to strangers in the arena). I think that a little leakage would be okay, but right now, I think that someone would be able to see everything almost upon entering the bathroom from where the door is.

Mike-

Thanks for this feedback. It’s constructive and extremely useful. I have some questions and justifications. I hope you’ll answer the questions, but feel free to poo poo the justifications.

I knew the plumbing issue might be a problem but I was trying to let the sinks be a screen (both visual and auditory) between zones. So here’s my question: in a typical layout, say like in my bathrooms in my work place, there are three walls that have plumbing in them because there are three bathrooms (mens, womens, single user stall for handicap accessibility). So that requires plumbing in three locations. If, in the office location, I simply stuck the urinals on the exterior wall, we’d only need plumbing in three locations: the two exterior walls and the sink in the middle. So would that make it more feasible? I mean, the sink thing in the middle could be fairly industrial looking. The pipes could run up from the floor all the way to the ceiling with some sort of faucet popping off at the appropriate height. As for the stadium bathroom, moving the urinals around is non-trivial. I wonder how waterless the waterless urinals really are.

The reason I specifically stuck more sinks than absolutely necessary on the men’s side in Le Grande bathroom was that evidence has suggested men are less likely to wash their hands. So I wanted to make sure that the sinks were almost in the way as they exited. As if maybe they’d fall in and get clean by accident. More likely, they wouldn’t be able to resist the novelty (and doctorly-ness) of the pedal operated sink and have to give it a go. I don’t know what to do when the novelty wears off. Hope the mere presence of females encourages more decorous behavior? It’s hard to say.

There is still time to make changes to the design – the book isn’t in print yet. So I will take your suggestions back to the drawing board with me.

On site lines: they’ll certainly change if I move the urinals against the wall in the office scale bathroom. I will keep that test in mind as I go. A little visual leakage in some spots is OK and kind of intentional.