AWARD YEAR
2019
CATEGORY
Community
GOALS
Clean Water & Sanitation
KEYWORDS
gender equality , public space, toilets
COUNTRY
Netherlands
DESIGNED BY
Elisa Otañez is a Social Designer working with concept development, design and field research. As a non-conformist citizen and designer, she is involved in problematizing and solving social issues where design can be used as an agent of change in topics like inequality, city-making, politics, and social relationships. Apart from focusing on social transformation through conscious design, her research also concentrates on incorporating a gender perspective lens in her design practice.
WEBSITE
https://www.elisaotanez.com/yellow-spot/
Yellow Spot
The Yellow Spot is a mobile toilet and a short-term solution to the lack of public toilets for women
In Eindhoven there are around 10 public, free urinals for men and only 1 unisex pay toilet women can use at a cost of 50 cents (in Amsterdam: 35 public urinals and 3 public toilets, respectively). Cities are also for women to live in, and being denied places to pee is not only a design flaw but discrimination.
The design of the toilet is inspired in the jerry can: on its durability and ability to contain and transport liquids. The waterless urinal can contain up to 20 liters of urine, later emptied through a valve and be reused. It can be transported around a city with its mobile booth (making it autonomous of any sewage system) while marching in demand of toilets for women.
The Yellow Spot’s addresses an urgency and an alternative solution to the problem. Its explicit language of impermanence intentionally advocates for its functions to become permanent. Its temporality should not remain as such, but be replaced by an appropriate design: safe, hygienic and inclusive to all.