Tag: D-Crit

Potty Parity: Women and the Architecture of Toilets

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It’s a sight most women are familiar with: the dreaded long line for the bathroom. Unlike men whom seldom need to queue, a common question from women is why can’t there just be more toilets for women in a building?

In most contemporary architecture, equal space is given to bathrooms for men and women. While this sounds right, it fails to address the different gender practices inside each. Women tend to spend more time in a bathroom, and one reason is they relieve themselves in cubicles and men use urinals which are more compact in size. A men’s bathroom can accommodate more men going about their business as compared to what goes on in a women’s bathroom. So while there may be spatial parity, women find their freedom of movement constrained by the architecture within the bathrooms.

This everyday problem highlights Rendell’s discussion of how women users value spaces differently from men. The gap in how different genders experience a building highlights the (male-friendly) values and assumptions made by the architect and developer. 

There has been a recent movement for “potty parity”, a call for equitable provision of washroom facilities for men and women within a public space. One solution is to create unisex toilets, while another has been to provide more bathrooms for women. In 2005, the New York City Council passed the Women’s Restroom Equity Bill, requiring all new establishments to maintain a 2:1 ratio of women’s bathroom stalls to men’s stalls and urinals.

Not only can women rejoice, but the days of men waiting for their wives and girlfriends outside the bathrooms will soon be over too.

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Written for Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s Cultural Theory class at D-Crit in response to Jane Rendell’s “Tendencies and Trajectories: Feminist Approaches in Architecture”

Forgotten your password?

It’s a simple question that has stumped me countless times: What’s my password?

As I stare at the computer screen, my blank stare is reflected by the empty space prompting me for my password. A cursor blinks like a wagging finger chastising me for being absent-minded.

But how am I to be blamed when I have to keep track of so many passwords for my digital existence today? Social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest; multiple e-mail addresses for work, school and personal correspondences; as well as various online services from internet banking, to reading the news, and even shopping! All of these require passwords to access. And each should preferably be unique so that my personal data remains protected even if one gets compromised. But we all know the truth: it’s just more convenient to have one password to secure them all.

I use a few different passwords for my various accounts. This is partly driven by paranoia as I’ve come across more and more stories over the years about hacked accounts. Most of the changes, however, have simply been because I’ve forgotten my password and had to reset them. While I usually get my browser to remember a password after setting them for the first time, the horror comes when I’ve gotten logged out or had to use another computer to log-in. I cannot recall the number of times I’ve had to click on “Forgotten your password?”.

Having multiple passwords is a hassle, so it’s no wonder that “123456” is the most popular password in use today, according to a survey by SplashData. This password management service which analyzed stolen passwords available online, also found that the next most common password was, well, “Password”. Six numbers lined up consecutively on the top left corner of the keyboard and a word that describes itself — how easy are these to remember?

These passwords go against security expert’s advice to keep them complicated — at least 8 characters long, a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols, not a complete word, does not contain your name— but their popularity reflect an expectation many of us have of a security system: it should protect without becoming inconvenient. With a physical lock, we feel secure as long as we hold on to the key. Similarly, we think our digital accounts are safe as long as only we know our passwords — regardless how simple it is. After all, who even knows I have an account? Even then, they need to figure out my username, and why would anyone expect me to use such a silly password. The chances are probably much lower than me struggling to remember a complicated password each time I need to log-in.

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My passwords are based on things that are dear to me. While a password gives access to personal data and information, in itself, the combination of numbers and letters often contains fragments of the owner’s identity too. According to a 2013 survey of Google Apps users in the United Kingdom, personal information such as significant dates, place of birth, as well as names of children or family members made up the ten most common passwords. Pet names were the top choice. Like these users, I personalize my passwords so I can recall them better. Mix a birthdate with my initials, throw in bits of my home address, and maybe, a nickname of my parent — and voila! — my very own “unique” password. Paradoxically, this helps people set on hacking into my account. A bunch of unmarked keys could belong to any lock out there, but the School of Visual Arts lanyard on mine narrows it down for someone who’s picked it up. This is especially so in this digital age, when we live out much of our personal lives online.How difficult is it for someone to figure out the name of your pet from your endless stream of Instagram photos? Having to become my own locksmith, I’ve realized that behind every lock is a set of paradoxes. Their very existence calls out to the fact that something valuable is behind it. We want our locks to be secure against strangers, but also convenient for those we trust.

Passwords have become the keys of our digital times. My girlfriend knows most of my passwords, and increasingly, we find ourselves creating ones that reflect our shared lives. In the way one makes a set of apartment keys for those we love, we’ve built our very own digital keys to share too. Sharing passwords becomes a practical issue as we lead more of our lives online. Services such as Facebook and Google have policies on how family members can get access to accounts of loved ones who have deceased. It involves various layers of verification which can be saved if one had simply shared their passwords. That’s one reason why I’ve written all my passwords onto a sheet of paper. A physical copy is probably safer than a digital note, I like to think. And just to be extra safe, I’ve even come up with a rudimentary code to protect it. Change a letter or two, or write it backwards instead — just some tips I picked up from my love of spy novels as a child.

The truth is it does not take too much for us to feel secure. No security system is foolproof. All locks really do is to buy us time and the assurance of having tried to keep our possessions safe. A determined intruder can break our locks and find alternative entry points. Even the Berlin wall eventually fell! As recent thefts of credit card data from Target and Neiman Marcus’ customers have shown, online security is not entirely within our control. Regardless the complexity of your passwords, it can easily be compromised by someone else’s mistake in this networked world we live in. All it took was a Heartbleed bug to send all of us scrambling to cook up new passwords.

Wouldn’t it be more meaningful to create trust and transparency between people rather than build security against one another? Maybe the question is what am I securing myself against? As much as locks keep out, they also keep in. In that private space I’ve kept away, I may just find nothing more than my deep insecurities about the world that I live in. As much as I like to think it is safe and that people are good, it really isn’t. It’s my dark secret about humanity: evil lurks somewhere deep inside each of us.

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Written for Akiko’s Busch Reading Design class at D-Crit.

Singapore: The Air-Conditioned Nation

From old to new

The air-conditioner is the greatest invention of last century. That’s according to Mr Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore, a bustling city right in the heart of the tropics.

In a 2001 documentary chronicling Singapore’s rapid rise from Third to First World in just over three decades, Lee not only revealed his choice, but also how he kept the temperature in his office at 22 °C (71.6 °F) and his bedroom at 19 °C (66.2 °F) when Singapore’s equatorial climate averages around 30 °C (86 °F).

Air-condition technology certainly allowed Singapore to rapidly modernize to standards of Western cities by importing its architecture wholesale. Steel skyscrapers and glass buildings could thrive anywhere because this technology allowed them to ignore climatic conditions.

Such modern buildings quickly replaced tropical architecture, however, as seen in the image above. Air-condition units are attached to the back of shophouses which originally were designed with features to keep the interiors cool without the energy-guzzling air-condition. The rise of architecture that ignores local climates and the loss of tropical ways have gave rise to unsustainable lifestyles in Singapore. Today, its people adopt Western fashion like cardigans and suits while eating food from all round the world.

It takes a lot of energy to maintain this city’s artificial climate, and it has become ridiculous. In 2008, when asked about climate change Lee said that he now needed warm clothing more often in Singapore than when he traveled to Europe because the air-conditioned offices were freezing!

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Written for Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s Cultural Theory class at D-Crit in response to “Beyond Sustainability: Architecture in the Renewable City” by Peter Droege