Word: kira
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...refuge for all reasons, serving also as laundry room, solarium, greenhouse and primping parlor, a place for delousing pets, deep thinking and stashing wet umbrellas. Yet even in its more basic functions, the contemporary American bathroom is "hopelessly antiquated and inadequate," in the view of Alexander Kira, an architect and Cornell professor who has immersed himself in the subject for 17 years. Indeed, he points out, the Western loo has changed little since the late 19th century, when Thomas Crapper of London patented his flush toilet-and thereby insinuated himself into colloquial English...
...Bathroom (Viking), a newly updated and expanded version of an urbane study he published in 1966, Kira argues that the standard bathroom is uncomfortable, unsanitary and unsafe. The average 5-ft. by 7-ft. model is badly lit and ventilated; it seldom provides adequate storage and counter space for all the tubes, jars, bottles, blades, brushes and electrical appliances that have become the indispensable artifacts of ablution. Clearly, if cleanliness is next to godliness, it is also next to impossible in bathrooms that lack "facilities for perineal hygiene," meaning bidets. Moreover, some 275,000 people in the U.S. are injured...
Wider Seat. Kira concludes from continuing research that the standard toilet is "the most ill-suited fixture ever designed," whether for comfort or efficient elimination. The whatchamacallit should be from 5 in. to 9 in. lower and shaped so that the occupant could take the natural squatting position of primitive man; it should also have a wider padded seat and incorporate two water jets for cleansing. Many washbasins, he finds, are built "so low as to be ideal only for small children." He proposes a contoured bowl, 36 in. high, deep at one end, wide and shallow at the other...
...eyed bather to adjust water temperature without alternately scalding or freezing himself. To avoid slipping while balancing on one leg, a continuous wraparound safety bar is needed. "One can get a car washed automatically in five minutes, while it still takes us 15 minutes to wash ourselves by hand," Kira notes wryly, and predicts that sweeping technological changes are due in personal hygiene...
...toothpicks to hair dryers and whirlpool agitators. More mechanized conveniences are surely coming. More important, he hopes that his report has finally lifted the "veil of embarrassment," and that the bathroom can be at last openly examined. "Until the bathroom is conceived of and produced as an entity," Kira maintains, "no significant progress can be made...