All-gender restrooms are becoming more commonplace, as issues of accessibility and inclusion play a more central role in the architectural design process. However, there are a wide range of challenges that can arise during the process of designing and constructing all-gender restroom facilities. Why do all-gender restrooms fail to make it through the design process and into a finished building? What are the stumbling blocks along the way, and how can we lessen the gap between ideation and implementation?

All-Gender Restroom Design: A Field Guide is the result of a grant-funded research project to identify common barriers to implementation and to build a central knowledge base around all-gender restroom design. It is meant to serve as a toolkit for project teams to help them navigate the design process for multi-user all-gender restrooms. The Field Guide encompasses a wide range of categories—terminology, signage and wayfinding, inclusive design principles, design strategies, code compliance—that collectively encompass the new and evolving design paradigm of multi-user all-gender restrooms. The Field Guide also includes a series of prototypical floor plans produced from synthesizing precedent projects, both internal and external, into common typologies.

My original proposal for the Field Guide was awarded a series of grants from HGA’s Research Council—first a nano-grant to develop the research scope, then a micro-grant to execute the research. I served as leader of the multidisciplinary research team, wrote the majority of the text, and spearheaded the overall layout and design of the final document. The ideas behind the Field Guide originally began as a series of blog posts at Payette.