the new public restroom

danger boy · August 2004

Here's a picture of a public toilet in Switzerland.

Now that you have seen the outside view of the Toilet,

Just spend some more time scrolling down to see how it looks from inside..!!

danger boy · August 2004

That's made entirely out of one-way glass. No one can see you in there, but when you are inside, it looks like you're sitting in a clear glass box. Would you use it?!?!!!!!....

F1nut · August 2004

When ya gotta go, ya gotta go!

danger boy · August 2004

now that's what i can an "outhouse"

booooo bad joke!

Loud & Clear · August 2004

For heaven's sake. You just KNOW that some dudes are gonna be whackin' it whilst looking at the people passing by. This is a sick world we live in.

brettw22 · August 2004

Originally posted by Loud & Clear
For heaven's sake. You just KNOW that some dudes are gonna be whackin' it whilst looking at the people passing by. This is a sick world we live in.

LOL........that thought never crossed my mind.......but at least we know who the sick one's are...

madmax · August 2004

You know what happens after dark, right? If the light is brighter inside than outside you could see inside. :eek:
madmax

bobman1235 · August 2004

I thought this might be fake or something, so I looked it up on a couple of urban legend websites. Seems it's real : (from http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_glass_toilet3.htm)

It's real. The preceding photographs were taken in Basel, Switzerland in June 2004, as best I can determine. But, though the stainless steel potty within the glass cube is fully functional, it isn't what you'd call an "official" public toilet. It's a work of art.

The installation, entitled "Don't Miss a Sec," originally stood on a bustling construction site facing the Tate Britain Museum in London. Unveiled in December 2003 by conceptual artist Monica Bonvicini, it was immediately dubbed "Loo with a View" by the British press. From the outside looking in, it appears to be nothing more than a monolith made of mirrors; from the inside looking out, it's a 360-degree window on the world.

Omnipresent surveillance

Besides posing an obvious challenge to the cultural norms separating "the private" from "the public," the work was intended to reflect (pun intended) something of the history of the site, where England's first state penitentiary, Millbank Prison, originally stood. It was here that British philosopher and penal reformer Jeremy Bentham hoped to erect his "Panopticon," a jail constructed in the shape of a wheel with an observation tower at its hub allowing for the omnipresent surveillance of prisoners who, in turn, could not see their God-like keepers. He was never able to secure funding for the project.

"In light of this history," writes art critic Jennifer Allen, "'Dont Miss a Sec' reflects the perpetual gaze of the surveillance camera, a high-tech gargoyle that has made so many buildings into tireless sentinels of public space. Where Foucault criticised the panopticons surveillance system as a new way of disciplining the subject in the age of industrialisation, Bonvicinis system of reflective glass suggests that we are all too happy to watch and to be watched in our society of the spectacle."

In theory, perhaps. According to news accounts, most passersby have expressed reluctance to use the facility.