For the High-End Bathroom, Something Unexpected
AMONG the features of the new 6,000-square-foot, $3 million entertainment wing in Kevin Scherer’s home in Plano, Tex., are two bars, a theater, a video game room, a shuffleboard table and a golf simulator that projects images of top courses onto a big screen.
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Oh, and a urinal.
“It fit the theme of the golf simulator room, which is a men’s activity,” said Mr. Scherer, a 44-year-old retired Internet executive, speaking of the $1,269 Kohler Bardon urinal he installed in an adjoining bathroom and unveiled at a Christmas party, as though showing off a ceramic trophy. No guy would ever use the toilet, he added, “if he knew the urinal was there.”
While the thought of a home urinal may seem vaguely “Animal House,” Mr. Scherer’s interior designer, Ashley Astleford, wasn’t surprised by his request. This was the second time in the last few months that she was asked to install a urinal in a luxury residential project, and she said she knows many other designers and architects who have been specifying home urinals in their projects. According to Ms. Astleford, who is based in Dallas, home urinals are becoming “a definite must for luxury master suites.”
If an increasing number of men are looking to bring the amenities of a football stadium into their high-end homes, manufacturers now seem ready to oblige. Several companies, observing growing consumer interest in their commercial models over the last few years, have begun to produce residential urinals, bringing a sleek, designer aesthetic to a device long relegated to plumbing supply stores and public restrooms.
Duravit U.S.A., a division of the German bathroom fixture manufacturer — whose headquarters in Hornberg, designed by Philippe Starck, features a gigantic toilet embedded in the facade — currently sells three models for home installation, including the $1,250 Utronic, which has an infrared-triggered flush.
In 2005, Toto U.S.A. began selling the wall-mounted Lloyd home urinal, also with a motion-sensing flush feature, for $975, as part of its luxury bath collection. David Krakoff, vice president of sales at Toto, said the company has gone from selling dozens of urinals a month to hundreds since introducing the Lloyd. And Villeroy & Boch has introduced eight residential urinals in the past four years.
“This is found business,” said Tim Schroeder, president of Duravit U.S.A., adding that residential clients are more receptive to the idea now that they have seen fancy versions in boutique hotels and restaurants.
The new urinals bear little resemblance to the grungy fixtures you might see littered with cigarette butts and hanging from the wall of a truck-stop men’s room. Consider, for example, Duravit’s McDry, an elegant, teardrop-shaped model that sells for $895 and doesn’t require water to flush (instead it uses a biodegradable blue oil, penetrable by a stream of urine, which acts as a barrier to odors).
For the modernist, there is the Spoon, by the British firm Philip Watts Design, made of polyresin, sculptured in the shape of a teaspoon and available in an array of colors for $1,369. Also available are the Contour ($1,674) and the Prizm ($1,431), two stainless steel residential models made by Neo-Metro, a California company known for making metal fixtures for prisons.
Some urinals are even being personalized. When Tad Dinkins, a 35-year-old Caterpillar equipment dealer from St. Louis, remodeled his basement bathroom, he installed one of Villeroy & Boch’s Subway models with an etched image of a golf flag that serves as a target — the finishing touch in a tricked-out bar and gaming space. “My wife didn’t like it, but I put it in,” said Mr. Dinkins, who is not alone in encountering resistance from the woman in his life.
Indeed, there is still a certain amount of squeamishness about home urinals, particularly among women, so marketers are focusing on designer style and claims about cleanliness in an effort to overcome negative associations. Kohler U.S.A., for instance, says that its “human factors group” — a team that studies, among other things, how people urinate — has found the best urinal shape for keeping the bathroom clean. A result is Kohler’s funnel-shaped Steward series, introduced last April.
“When you go at a flat wall there’s lots of splash,” said Shane Judd, product manager of Kohler’s fixtures group, whose job it is to know these kinds of things. “The conical shape eliminates splash.”
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/garden/25urin.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&ref=bathroomsandtoilets&adxnnlx=1379260428-XVzPJANunZG8zosdKr3CAQ
by Suzanne Gannon
by Suzanne Gannon
http://www.thisoldtoilet.com
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