Intimacy Exposed: Toilet, Bathroom, Restroom

Essays and artistic contributions on toilets and bathrooms, and on what these most private rooms say about how society is changing.

Most of the texts were written for a 2018 symposium of the same name, organised by HEAD – Genève's interior architecture department. They ask how the people who use these spaces could be better served, how disputes between users of different sexes and ages in public facilities might be settled, and what is at stake for personal and public health. Other contributions look back at the recent history of modernist sanitary technology, at changes in fittings and furniture, and at the unofficial lives of these rooms, as informal and sometimes transgressive meeting places and as spaces people are obliged to share.

Javier Fernández Contreras and Roberto Zancan edited the book, with HEAD – Genève as co-editor. Contributors include Joel Sanders, Philippe Rahm, Catherine Ince, Alexandra Midal, Rotor-Deconstruction, Eva Gil Lopesino, and Louise Lemoine with Ila Bêka. Design by Elias Erkan.

Spector Books, 2023. 110 pages, perfect-bound softcover, 23 x 30 cm, with around 100 colour illustrations. In English.