TA24-J F-Pages - Flipbook - Page 13
Of Note
1.2 restrooms per 10,000 people. San Antonio, with
a comparable population, has 3.6. St. Petersburg,
Florida, has the greatest coverage with 6.5 public
restrooms per 10,000 people. Yelp and Google
reviews of Dallas’ parks show that the facilities
that do exist are frequently locked or inaccessible.
If you count the restrooms in the 25 branch libraries across the city, there’s slightly better coverage.
And while libraries cover many more needs in a
community than providing books, they are not
designed to be the city’s primary public restroom
option. They are also not open seven days a week,
24 hours a day, leaving many hours without any
public options available.
What this means is that, generally speaking,
you’re dependent on private businesses if you
have to go. People have created crowdsourced
guides on sites like Freepee or Yelp, directing
people to businesses like McDonalds or Burger
King. My go-to in downtown Dallas has always
been The Joule hotel — it’s clean and has nice
soap and great lighting. But really, you shouldn’t
have to frequent a place of business to address a
basic need. And businesses aren’t always so keen
on letting you, sometimes denying their restrooms
even to paying customers. In August, there was a
well-publicized incident at Serious Pizza where
the civil rights of a customer with a disability
were violated when he was denied access to the
restroom, even after he provided documentation
of his disability.
The restrooms’ entryways have no doors, to provide
acoustical connection.
There are examples of progress being made
that provide beautiful, local precedents. Until
recently, Main Street Garden was the only downtown park with public restrooms. That’s no longer
the case now that Harwood, Carpenter, and Paci昀椀c
Plaza parks have opened. Sarah Hughes, vice president and project director of Downtown Dallas
Parks Conservancy, told me that the restrooms are
an important design feature of the new parks. She
says: “[These parks] are considered neighborhood
parks for downtown; however, the users of these
public spaces extend beyond those who live or work
in Downtown Dallas. Out-of-town visitors, tourists,
and, yes, the unhoused population, use these parks.
Not everyone who visits a park will have access
to a private restroom in a residence or business.
Everyone who visits may need access to restroom
facilities at some point, for a number of reasons.
Restrooms may not be the most glamorous or celebrated feature in parks, but they are both a public
amenity and a necessity for public health in cities.”
The Carpenter Park pavilion, a small structure
that houses restrooms and other park-related programs, was designed by Dallas-based Shipley Architects. Despite the permanent shadow cast over it due
to its location under Interstate 345, the design creates a bright and inviting space. “The restrooms are
accessed o昀昀 a central breezeway that connects both
sides of the building to the surrounding park,” says
architect Dan Shipley, FAIA. “It seemed important
that this connection not be hall-like but rather feel
like the park itself extended into the building. With
openings at each side, you are looking through the
building and seeing a park on the other side instead
of looking into a dark hole.” He also notes that, in
the interest of acoustical connection, there are no
doors. “A parent will feel more secure knowing their
child’s voice could be heard from inside either restroom,” he says. “Natural light was important to help
make the restroom interiors friendlier.” Many of
these design elements included by Shipley — natural
daylight, activation of the space with other programs,
using materials that are attractive and durable —
echo design recommendations made in a 2020 report
produced as part of the 2018-2019 Forefront Fellowship at the Urban Design Forum by Julie Chou,
Kevin A. Gurley, and Boyeong Hong. In the report,
they provide a host of design, safety, maintenance,
cost, and technology recommendations, as well as
guidelines for siting new public restrooms based on a
triangulation of existing restrooms, public urination
complaints, and street homelessness reports.
There are many opportunities that Dallas
could look to if it wants to continue to build on
the success of the new downtown parks. In Tokyo,
16 “starchitects” were invited to redesign existing
public restrooms throughout the Shibuya neighborhood. An innovative program like that could be
a great complement to the “architectural petting
zoo” that is the Arts District. Research about and
design propositions for public infrastructure like
this could be a great collaboration with a Texasbased architecture school.
Anyone who has been on a downtown Dallas
Facebook group page knows that lots of people
have lots of opinions about the downtown bathroom situation. Allowing concerns about safety
and crime, similar to the ones that thwarted plans
for free toilets in the ’70s and ’80s, to prevent progress on this issue would be cutting o昀昀 the nose to
spite the face. As shown in the design of the new
downtown Dallas parks, there are ways to address
safety through design. Hughes tells me: “Safety is
absolutely a concern. The facilities are no longer
contributing to the public good if the 昀椀re department has to kick down the door on a regular basis
to rescue someone, and then the restrooms remain
locked until funds are available for monitoring
and/or redesign. In response to this feedback, each
park’s respective design team con昀椀gured restroom
buildings that can be opened and closed according to park hours, and the restrooms themselves
include privacy stalls rather than full-length doors.
This enables security and/or health professionals
to intervene in an emergency situation.”
But, more importantly, it’s not a matter of
“either/or” but rather “yes, and.” Yes, we need
more public restrooms, and abundant a昀昀ordable
housing, and more permanent supportive housing,
and readily available mental health care, and…
and… and.... Folks working on issues of public
space in Dallas recognize this. Evan Sheets, the
vice president of planning and policy at Downtown
Dallas, Inc., commented, “I think that as it relates
to our unhoused population, the conversation gets
much bigger and more comprehensive focusing on
a full suite of wrap-around services provided by
multiple organizations and entities.” As the city continues to grapple with issues of inequity, it needs to
reframe how it thinks about public infrastructure to
meet the daily needs of its residents. For designers,
advocating for this reframing not only advances the
goal of a better quality of life for all, but could lead
to the creation of exciting new design opportunities.
Lizzie MacWillie, AIA, is an architect and urban
designer. She is the current assistant director of the
J Max Bond Center for Urban Futures and a former
director at buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a Dallasbased community design center.
1/2 2024
Texas Architect 11
