Hasta La Ideas

Here’s another update from the cutting edge of toilet design: Copenhagen studio UiWE are working on urinals for women.

UiWE first trialled the Pollee urinals at Roskilde festival in Denmark earlier this month, where guys were treated to the tree-mounted urinals by Aandeboom that we featured in our earlier story.

Four girls can use a cluster of urinals around one central core, divided by low screens.

Users squat rather than standing up, maintaining their poise by clutching handles at the edge of each screen.

Three prototypes with different levels of privacy were trialled at Roskilde – Pollee Shy, Pollee Topless and Pollee Naked – and the designers hope to put a modified version into production next year.

UiWE was founded in 2008 by culture and philosophy graduate Christian Pagh. The team now includes interior architect Nuala Collins, designer Sara Nanna Jørgensen and ideator Marie Wöldike.

Check out our top ten stories about designer toilets here »

More information is provided by the designers:

PeeBetter and Pollee – the female urinal.

Copenhagen culture design agency UiWE launches the online platform PeeBetter and the female urinal Pollee. The ambition is to create smart and attractive solutions to pee in public space. First mission: a simple solution for girls.

At Roskilde Festival 2011 UiWE presented the first prototype of Pollee – an open-air, touch-free urinal for girls. At Pollee, four girls can pee together around a shared core, partly protected by low walls. The basic idea with Pollee is creating a simple and portable form that makes peeing quicker and easier.

At the festival, three different versions of Pollee with varying degrees of privacy were placed alongside each other: Pollee Shy, Pollee Topless and Pollee Naked. This enabled the girls to try, compare and give feedback on the different versions.

PeeBetter and Pollee are initiated by cultural planner Christian Pagh of Copenhagen based cultural design agency UiWE with a team of independent designers. Christian Pagh says: ”The Roskilde project was all about testing our idea: a simple, open-air pee solution for girls. Quite frankly: the girls’ response at the festival was overwhelming. We have talked to hundreds of girls and although we received ideas for improvement, the overall message was: We use it and we love it!”

A focal point for the designers is finding the balance between private and public. It’s an important feature of Pollee that it is open and social – making it simpler and faster than the disgusting port-a-loos. Another thing that makes Pollee special is the combination of a semi-squat position and something to hold on to, giving the user balance and support while peeing. The design is based on months of testing and investigation into the pee needs of women.

The version of Pollee presented at Roskilde Festival 2011 was a first prototype. Now UiWE are building collaborations with some of the great festivals in Denmark – Roskilde and Distortion – to develop a refined and larger-scale version for 2012. The aim is to mass-produce Pollee next year.

“Our drive is that Pollee becomes a real queue-killer that enables girls to get peeing over and done with quickly, so they can get on with the more fun and important things. Queuing is such a waste of life!” says Christian Pagh.

Pollee is designed by UiWE and PeeBetter in association with independent designers Sara Nanna Jørgensen and Nuala Collins. PeeBetter is a strategic platform for developing human solutions to peeing in public space – for both sexes. The ambition is to unite cultural understanding, infrastructure and design to find genuine solutions to peoples’ genuine needs.

See also:

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P-Tree by Aandeboom	Hiroshima Park Toilets by Future Studios	Gravesend public toilets by Plastik Architects