ELISA OTAÑEZ

Yellow Spot

Toilets connect every activity, urban and otherwise. Yet there continues to be a systematic absence of public toilets for women. This takes away a human basic right: having a safe place to pee in public space.

The project's temporality implies that something must take its place. Its mobile booth is a banner that demands free toilets for women around cities. And as a protest does, it exposes the unfairness of inaccessible cities for women and demands solutions.

In Eindhoven, there is a current lack of public toilets for women which represents a form of coercion, segregation, and discrimination from public space. In this context, the Yellow Spot establishes an alternative model of city making by starting a debate about the importance of the provision of toilets for women.

The gender inequality in accessing toilets in cities is widely invisible and it is so normalized that it’s simply not questioned and mostly ignored. The inspiration behind the project happened by applying a gender perspective lens focusing on public spaces. By doing so the differences that exist between men and women accessing public toilets became visible and obvious.

In Eindhoven, there are around 10 public, free urinals for men and only 1 unisex pay toilet women can use at a cost of 50 cents. Cities are also for women to live in and this also implies having places to pee.

The Yellow Spot is a mobile toilet designed as a short-term solution in response to the lack of public facilities for women in the Netherlands. It works as a waterless urinal which gives it autonomy of mobility making it independent of any sewage systems.

The design of the portable toilet is inspired in the jerry can and its unique design of durability and ability to contain and transport liquids. As a jerry can, the Yellow Spot’s characteristic of mobility and most importantly, its property of containing liquids, addresses an urgency, a quick assistance and alternative solution to the problem. The outcome reconciles a functional toilet and a provocative statement which, when combined, reflect the current inequality that many women still undergo in the public sphere.

The Yellow Spot also allows for a coming into existence of an invisible issue. It’s explicit language of impermanence intentionally advocates for its functions to become permanent. Its temporality should not remain as such, but be replaced by an appropriate design: safe, hygienic and inclusive to all.

The Yellow Spot is the physical representation of the discrimination that women undergo in public space. With situations like these, the project reveals in itself a catalyst potential to provoke conversation and visualize an issue that is pretty much invisible.

This project is not only about toilets, but also about our capacity of experiencing and learning to observe cities through a gender perspective lens. Maybe this way we can begin to restructure a more equal society.