Word: kira
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Washington, home of the best and the worst in public facilities. (The museums along the Mall contain what may be the world's densest concentration of well- kept public rest rooms. And then there is the rest of the city.) With us for a short orientation is Alexander Kira, a professor of architecture at Cornell. Kira is the utter antithesis of public rest-room grunge -- a dapper, courtly figure who carries a silver case for his imported cigarettes and keeps a silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He's the author of a highly regarded study, The Bathroom...
...home market is glamorous, and consumers spend a lot of money on it," says Kira, about to embark on a tour of unhomey rest rooms at National Airport. The public rest room has no such constituency, just a lot of people "who may be there once for three minutes, never to return." Since most people avoid commenting on the facilities, or subscribe to the polite fiction that they haven't visited them, any establishment can safely relegate public rest rooms to a dank and mingy corner. They double as storerooms or janitors' closets...
...young architect starting out, says Kira, "being given bathrooms is like being given latrine duty in the Army." He surveys the resulting mistakes in a men's room at National: no shelves for hand luggage above the backs of the toilets -- ideal for thieves who can grab a bag from under the stall door when you're least able to fight back; a urinal that projects into the narrow aisle, so everybody has to sidle past; a sink counter that is too spacious -- good at home, but here just someplace to slop up as you go drip-dropping in search...
...stairs are handier, but they lack directional signs and so lead the uninitiated to an underground garage. Back up one flight, through a vast, empty room, into another room containing only a security desk (unattended), just in time to see the ostensibly broken elevator arrive (let's call it Kira's law: cosmic jokers all come out when you need a rest room). The stalls in the men's room have no doors, half the lights are out, and there are too many people hanging around doing nothing in particular. Upstairs, the guards explain that the men's room...
Winning the Mather House seat was RobertWeissman '88. Only two candidates ran for the seatleft empty when representative Kira R. Diaz '86resigned...