I once stayed at a very boutiquey, avant-garde hotel with a platonic friend. We had booked a twin room with separate beds, but what I did not expect was that the shower cubicle, with clear glass on all three sides, would be placed between the beds.
The world makes full circle. A 4-toilet (2 facing the other 2 for lively conversation) bathroom per floor, no walls whatsoever between the toilets, "open layout" so to speak, in our dormitory in high school (regional school for advanced science studies) in USSR in 80-ies come to mind. Looks like we were living the boutiquey avant-garde way of the future :)
Sounds like the various RAF bases I did stints at as a cadet - the ablutions were just a great big room full of loos, showers, and bathtubs, all with dark brown water, and absolutely zero privacy of any variety.
The exposed loos were a novelty for me, at school we at least had shoulder height partitions - but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.
I also spent a year or so living in a studio where the loo was in the kitchen area - we at least installed a curtain.
On a trip I took with my father-in-law, the first morning he waltzed right into the little hotel room bathroom while I was showering (in a glass shower) and proceeded to sit on the throne and take a crap. I was confused at his lack of basic respect for privacy, and then remembered he'd been a US Navy guy for many years. Military folks just get used to no privacy in such matters.
Growing up in West Virginia, I was in a moderately sized city (40k people) but when traveling to smaller high schools for football games, you'd often find a shared latrine as the bathroom, and everyone who needed to pee would just crowd around a long sink thing and just let 'er rip. No idea what it was like in the ladies'
I would suspect that this is highly jurisdiction-dependent. Around here (random EU country), it would instantly make all studio flats unrentable, so I don’t think that’s the case. Most of them have a bathroom door, though.
Seeing it was advanced science, authorities wanted to add venues to encourage constant communication and collaboration. Always working for the people and the state! No time wasted.
This is similar to the arrangements of public toilets in ancient Rome, except for them the seats are arrangemed in a circle.
Everything old is new again.
In London's Shard, the gent's toilets of the observation deck (on approx the 70th floor) have glass walls behind the urinals so if you look straight ahead while using them it is as if you are peeing on the city of London from a great height.
The old Warner stand at Lord's cricket ground used to be where the press watched from (before the new Media Centre was built). The urinals in old stand used to have windows above them looking out over the pitch so that the journalists wouldn't miss anything whilst they urinated.
I always enjoy a "loo with a view", including that one at the Shard. I also enjoyed the outdoor one I utilized in Botswana that had the toilet isolated from camp behind a small wooden fence, but while sitting on the throne you are facing out from a slight elevation onto a sweeping 180 degree view of the savanna, with antelopes, giraffes, and elephants roaming around.
"Back in my day," Lake Helen (~10,000 ft) on Mt. Shasta had a pit toilet without walls that faced the valley. Depending on the weather, it could even be above the clouds/fog and IIRC on a clear day you could see the ocean.
I've been on something similar in Washington State. Forget where. Maybe below Shuksan someplace. While wilderness experiences are obviously a different matter, I suspect that people here freaking out about lack of doors or whatever wouldn't necessarily be comfortable with how many deal with climbing/camping/canoeing/etc. People just look the other way.
At a road stop somewhere at 5000 meters on a mountain somewhere in Sichuan (a day out of Chengdu?), the latrine was two slippery 2-by-4s over an open pit. I’m really glad I just had to pee, because that was terrifying.
The W in Santiago, Chile, has a full-length floor-to-ceiling glass window in the shower, with the morning sun shining right in. Your other option is a bathtub set in the middle of the bedroom itself. Mercifully the WC has a door.
Pretty sure I went to a bar in NYC that still had a urinal trough running directly below the bar as you were standing there... so one wouldn't need to leave the bar to take a leak. This was 30 years ago. McSorleys maybe?
There's a hotel in Edinburgh with boutique pretensions I stayed in that had smoked glass (only) around the toilet. That was a pretty annoying arrangement for me and my wife. Luckily they had regular loos in reception.
wow, it is actually the one me and my SO stayed at! specifically this[0] kind of room. when reading your description i immediately thought about this one. we did have a gentleman's agreement, "can you please put on your noise cancelling headphones and don't look back, i gotta..."
only stayed there for one or two nights, it says a lot when a campervan gives more comfort than a hotel room :)
In between the beds?? Does that mean the shower was right in the middle of the room ? So that it would be impossible to place a double bed ? This is the weirdest part to me
But what's the logic? I have never seen it but it doesn't sound good even aesthetically (which is usually the justification for all kinds of violations of common sense). So what are they thinking?
A number of hotels that were built with this lack of privacy (including one I love - but its been fixed there though - more subtle worse as you could see in from the stairs) were all designed by the same architect who is said to have had a kink about looking into toilets.
Maybe he started it, and as his hotels are (otherwise) lovely it made it part of a cool aesthetic and was therefore copied?
I've only really encountered glass walls for the shower room in Asia, and in almost every case there's been a curtain that could be drawn across the glass if required.
