Barbican Centre plans to remove 18 women-only toilets as part of its Renewal project

This is going to gross you all out Ladies

Considering Unisex facilities with integral wash hand basins

We use the loo and wash our hands then need to open the door to get out

Recent research states 31% of men ( or at least those that would admit to it ) don’t wash their hands after using the toilet. Of course that will be higher I assume as no one’s watching what you’re up to in a self contained loo.
Those men will have had their hands on their penises and then use the door handle to get out of the toilet.

In comes the women who then washes her hands ( 20% don’t ) and puts her hand on the door handle to get out.

On average a person touches their face between 16 and 23 times an hour

🤢 Now there’s a nice thought for next time we are forced to use a Unisex loo.

To be fair, I think this has been in the pipeline a while. There’s still time to object though by email (“consultation” closes 2 June), by writing to [email protected]

A word that keeps popping into my head post the SC-ruling is spite.
Things are being said and done that seem to have no rationale except to be spiteful to women because the SC ruled in our favour, somewhat.

Actually removing women's toilets to replace them with #bekind ones has a whiff of spitefulness about it it..

Yes I was faced with that nonsense.
They basically made all the toilets ( bar a few) available to men. So women obviously weren’t going to use the urinal ones and ended up sharing theirs with men as well.
All this did was provide far more toilets for men
There were women like me wondering around aimlessly wondering how long we could hold it all in.

It is important we look progressive so suck it up women!

There seems to have been a big Barney back in 2017 when they did the first lot. So they know women hate it, but they’re doing it anyway…

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/barbican-to-review-genderneutral-toilets-after-furious-row-over-long-queues-for-women-a3509136.html

And this
they aren’t exactly the shining example they would us believe

That’s interesting!

Well, time they stood by their own design policies !
this from Arups

Clearly they still have single sex toilets in some places, but the irritating thing is that they have deliberately downgraded the existing provision of toilets for women as required by building regs, to provide unisex toilets which are optional - so much for trans rights not being at the expense of women's rights eh?🙄

Formula
Women = 101 / 121 seconds
90seconds to use the loo + 6 seconds to wash hands ( although 15/20 secs is required for a proper wash but most take 6 ) + 5 seconds to dry hands with a cloth and 20 under a dryer.

Men = 60 seconds to use the loo ( I won’t bother with the stats for hand washing 🤣

Of course the whole process for women in Unisex toilets is far more as we need to avoid wee on the floor and on the WC so
we have to hitch our skirts up around our waste
and straddle the pan to avoid wee on our legs

Wearing trousers is even more difficult as we have to
take them down but hold the bottoms up to stop them getting wee on our trousers whilst also straddling the bowl.

I find Yoga helps

They have ARUP doing inclusion.

Of note

If anyone from Allies and Morrison is on this thread
You are a big enough firm with plenty of women Architects….time to speak up!

I know where you mean. The queues are long there usually and you have to go on a toilet hunt usually for the other ladies toilets. It’s a bit of a maze and you wouldn’t want to be desperate
tap to read

I was at the Barbican recently and used the ladies loos outside the hall on the upper floor, I couldn't find any other ladies toilets anywhere!
It was a row of about 10 fully enclosed toilet, washbasin, dryer and mirror, outside was a narrow corridor so it appeared they have already converted the configuration. There was a short queue, the event I was at was pretty male dominated though.

If only @Conxis

In terms of the Hall there’s a capacity of 1948 people
According to research stats women visit events/ theatres at a capacity of 62%
Again according to stats women spend 90 seconds using a toilet ( not allowing for hand washing, periods etc ) Men take 60 seconds.
If everyone uses the toilet in a 30 minute interval ( I’m aware some are 20 minutes and also not everyone uses the toilet but apparently most do, just in case ) that means
Women need 110 toilets and
Men need a combined 34 toilets / urinals (both allowing for time to get to toilets )

That brings the level to just over 13 conveniences / head.
Interestingly this is approximately the same % that the National Theatre and Royal Court provide which are regarded as one of the better provisions in the country

If the Barbican use the BS standards for provision those numbers would nearly half which is one of the reasons why there’s always a queue for the ladies!

So that’s 144 conveniences in total ( based on usage capacity and time ) plus accessible toilets for the hall. If provided this would be sufficient for the adjacent theatre as well as the capacity is smaller and assuming both venues don’t have an interval at the same time.

So clearly the Barbican is under providing

They will say they can’t provide enough because the building is listed. However it’s Grade II listed, not I or II star, so they can in fact provide for single sex toilets without compromising the integrity of the building.

Of note Single sex and accessible toilets come first as a priority in the building regs with provision for Unisex after.

Any venue providing facilities in accordance with the British Standards is complying and couldn’t be taken to court, even though the standards are woefully lacking. We would therefore have to challenge the Standards

My other real concern is if there was a building evacuation like a fire or bomb alert.

We had to do fire drills as teachers and the aim was to get everyone out of the building in 5 minutes. I could do a ‘sweep’ of the toilets in seconds because you just bent down and looked for feet.
Now they will have all these fully enclosed toilets, do the staff or rescuers check every one, risking their own lives?

I am surprised the risk assessments don’t pick up on these kind of practicalities for a building so big.

Surely this is sex discrimination, if someone brought a case against them the numbers game alone would surely mean there’s a strong case of success?

Exactly

Women won’t have time to wait to use them anyway. They’ll be spending even more time queuing. That’s if they can even wait that long

So women will have 31 single sex toilets and
men will have 46 ( inc the urinals )
and

Women take 3 times longer to use a toilet !!!!! So women should have 3 times more. ie that makes it approx 19/ 20 for men and 58/ 57 for women. ( then we won’t see so many desperate women queuing for an entire interval )

Men are clearly still making all the decisions then I see.

Last time the Barbican tried this nonsense on they changed the male and female signage on the toilets to

• Toilets with urinals and
• Toilets without urinals

So fill out the forms but most of all
Boycott the Barbican and tell them why as they are determined, it seems, to shut us out.
If as many women as possible boycott the Barbican now the6 will see how it affects them before they make these decisions.

Anywhere that is private and sound resistant is handy for sex and drugs, like the universal cubicles. There was traces of cocaine found in over 90% of the Parliament loos, according to Sunday Times, though nothing was ever done about it.

The Barbican now? When will it end..I am so utterly fed up with this crap.

London is a big city, are drug users in the loos an issue at the Barbican specifically? Clearly they are an issue in some spaces, but in others it won't be much of a factor.

The main Barbican single sex loos are in the floor beneath the foyer from memory, are fully enclosed anyway (I think), basins outside and they are single sex. There is a bank of about twenty on one side for men and twenty on the other for women. The clientele are in the main older, many retired, for the concert hall at least. I don’t think this will land well with them at all, but hey, who cares about what your paying customers want when you have halos to shine and edgy reputations in arts management to promote?

The Barbican have lost the plot.

Everyone knows fully enclosed unisex toilets encourage drug users because it's a perfectly enclosed space. London has no shortage of junkies.

Public toilets with gaps under the door were invented for safety reasons. You can't have mixed sex toilets with gaps in between because men can't be trusted around women with their knickers off!

It's basic public safety 101.