“The bathrooms in the LCC Design Block really don’t help.”

“I don’t feel comfortable using a sink in a shared space with extremely bloody hands.“
(Free text responses from my survey ‘Menstruation in Academia’)

One of the themes that stood out in the free text replies I got through my survey were the toilet facilities at LCC. They received 18 mentions most of which highlight how they are not designed for people who menstruate. This has been supported by the many conversations I’ve had about my topic – the toilets always seem to come up.

A key complaint was that most female toilets at LCC don’t have sinks in the cubicles, therefore one potentially needs to walk past other people before getting to the sink and be able to wash one’s bloody hands.

I like to be very visual with my research, so in response to the survey data I spent the morning of the 6th December 2021 at LCC going through the female toilets and taking pictures of them.
I focussed on the toilets that the students and staff on BA Graphic & Media Design would most likely frequent based on their classrooms and the locations of the technical workshops and canteen. 
I’m sure I missed some other relevant bathrooms (like the one in the typo cafe) and it’s certainly also up to individual preference and how far someone is willing to walk within the building to have a ‘pleasant’ experience on the toilet.

After the data collection I edited and arranged the photographs into maps representing the relative location of the bathrooms to one another. This way I could make sense of the images with relation to distances one might have to travel from one part of the uni to a specific bathroom location. It also showed the changing bathroom landscape based on location within the building.

“Mapping, the systematic organisation of complex information in a form which may be transported and reinterpreted, is an activity that has much in common with graphic design – the collecting, editing and re-presentation of information in a communicable visual form might be defined as the very core of the discipline”

Noble and Bestley, 2004, p.72

I found that there was a clear division within the Tower Block above and below the10th floor. Above the 10th floor the toilets are in individual rooms with their own sinks, below the 10th floor the sinks are outside the cubicles, making it harder for persons using or changing their menstrual products to have privacy in case they need to wash their bloodied hands.
Above 10th are also the floors furthest away from some of the main activity centres within the building. The rooms are mainly used for administration as opposed to active teaching, some floors only accessible to staff. 
Like I said there may be more toilets within the vast architecture of the building that I have never come across. But if I have not found them in 7 years of teaching and 1 year of studying at LCC (in 2013) then chances are good that other GMD students and staff don’t know of them either, or the more comfortable facilities are simply too far away like the upper floors of the Tower Block.

All of the cubicles I photographed had sanitary bins in them which is helpful for people who menstruate. They seem like an afterthought or a late addition though, often crammed next to the toilet seat so that there is not much space to manoeuvre your legs while changing that menstrual product.

Personally I always think the sanitary bins are for the building / facility that is housing them rather than to benefit the menstruating person. Their main function seems to be to prevent the toilets from clogging up from tampons etc being flushed down. I find it awkward to put anything into them and they are often so close to the toilet seat that you can’t really access them. I wonder if a better design exists that works in small spaces and supports the facility as well as the person menstruating.

In conclusion the toilet facilities were definitely not designed with menstruation in mind. Unless they undergo major building works there is not much that can be done about the sink / toilet separation. 
So what else can be done to make the building more accommodating to people who menstruate? 
Within the survey responses there were also lots of requests and suggestions to have sanitary products available at university, like in Scotland. Just in case – one less worry in that quite intense time of the month. That would be a great start.

References

Noble, I., Bestley, R. (2004). Visual Research: An Introduction to Research Methodologies in Graphic Design. Worthing: Ava Publishing