img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Look mum – no hands!

A touch-free washroom

I put it down to all that bracing mountain climbing and Lederhosen, but Aryans have a fascination with health and cleanliness oft seen as curious by their Anglo-Saxon brothers. It accounts for that shelf in their loos, allowing you to analyse your stool before consigning it – and then deciding to modify your daily diet accordingly. That fascination for wellbeing continues in the latest concept by Swiss firm Franke – a wholly touch-free commercial washroom. Yep, with its ‘Way 2 Solutions’, the firm will design, plan and supply whole rooms that are completely touch-free. A simple swish of the hand will open and close a cubicle door and dispense the water, soap, and hot air to dry them. Of course the critical process remains a manual one, but until someone manages to put the ‘bot’ in ‘Robot’, we think Franke has pretty much cleaned up.

Latest

Tuesday 20 June 2023, 09:00 – 11:15 am

PiP Offices and Workspace Design webinar

Passionate about public space? The RIBA Journal is inviting architects to take part in an intensive one-day design workshop to develop fresh thinking

Passionate about public space? The RIBA Journal is inviting architects to take part in an intensive one-day design workshop to develop fresh thinking

Peter Barber celebrates the process of making in this year's architecture room at the annual RA show, where work is analogue, crafted and handmade

Peter Barber celebrates the process of making

As refugees from war-torn regions flood the city of Lviv, a new school is being 3D-printed using a robotic innovation that has been developed in response to the threat of shelling

Robotic innovation helps cope with threat of breaks during shelling

London’s most lavishly finished building of its kind since the war, Michael Rosenauer’s 1953 Time Life building was packed with contemporary art and design

Time Life building, New Bond Street, London, 1953