Not the Platonic ideal of a hotel room

No, but I bet the shower was a decent approximation of a Platonic solid.

I like to leave my platonic solids in the toilet bowl.

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 :)

Artists always do love communism for some reason.

"Some artists are communists".

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.

We pretend to shit and they pretend to pay us

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.

Kitchen-loo must be illegal these days - I think rentals need to have 2 doors between the two. Did it seem reasonable at the time?!

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.

I just recently(september) saw a sale advertisement for loo/bathroom-kitchen... With only small not full height partition next to seat...

> but we had communal showers and baths so it wasn’t a huge leap.

I dunno, I've no problem with communal showers, or nudity in general, but partition-less toilets feels like a bridge too far.

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'

Open troughs are fine, toilets facing each other with no partitions is a bit far. I grew up rural but not that rural.

> RAF

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.

> 80-ies

eighty...ies? eightieies? why not just "80s"?

English is not their first language so please give them a break ;)

Edit: I realize you are probably trying to help them learn. Carry on.

Had two toilets in my flat only parted with a thin wood wall. Better talking with another one that is shitting than playing on the smartphone.

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.

They had built some of those for the Olympics in Sochi, if memory serves.. :-)

Was it a "love hotel" because...that doesn't sound like a regular hotel?

That bathroom layout has become extremely common in normal hotels in parts of Asia and the Middle East.

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?

It also sounds like a plumbing nightmare to build.

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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Bawa

Where is Asia? I travel there often for work and have never come across such a layout

It is the large landmass covering about half of the northern hemisphere.

I get the joke on OP's typo for is/in, but even then you answered "what" instead of OP's "where".

It’s miscommunication all the way down

I live in Asia, I've only seen in love hotels.

This is done, presumably, so people dont buddy up to save money on rooms. They'll be too shy or modest. So if its 4 people traveling, say 2 couples, they'll rent two rooms instead of one.

Then why offer twin beds?

No doubt this same hotel is proud of their green credentials.

There are two possibilities:

They find this out in advance and find a 'normal' hotel and book a room there.

They find this out when they get to the hotel, complain to everyone, write bad reviews, never come back.

Lose-lose for the hotel (unless it's some remote destination with just one hotel there, but those are rare)

I can not even imagine sharing a room with another couple under any circumstances

Please tell my that you have pictures of this to show!

Wouldn’t be very platonic to take pictures.

That's how platonic friendships usually end.

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder..

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.

was it a travelodge? with that smoked glass bathrom being right behind the bed?

It was "The Hub by Premier Inn". There are some photos on Google.

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 :)

[0]https://www.premierinn.com/content/dam/pi/websites/desktop/n...

Such an odd decision. No privacy or isolation for the shower, but yes for the two twin beds. Sleep apart but shower together.

My SO and I move and snore, not a bad arrangement. Somehow I don't think that's what they were going for though.

It builds tension

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

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.

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.

Image: https://d3rcx32iafnn0o.cloudfront.net/Pictures/980x653fitpad...

The three square windows under the second tier, just below where the sportingbet.com and Jaguar advertising boards meet.

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.

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?

It could be a spittoon, which is designed for chewing tobacco. https://www.kegworks.com/blog/a-lesson-in-tavern-history-the...

But it seems like they also where used as urinals

"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.

Wilderness privvies often make up for in view what they lack in privacy and/or plumbing technology. I've similar memories from elsewhere.

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.

I went looking for pictures (someone must have shared this on internet ...). This is the closes I could find https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/comments/if6ahf/the_sh...

It's called foreplay. Jk.

I've seen a glass shower where the glass turned to smoked opaque glass with the push of a button. Maybe this shower had something similar?

But this is no excuse, still completely awkward and horrible design.

In my high school the toilet stalls had no doors and the walls were only about waist high brick walls. Horrific