Bathroom

The story of the modern bathroom is both one of grand feats of engineering and mass production, and of the unremarkable, mundane and repressed. The most private place in the home, the bathroom is where we perform the most intimate of our daily routines; it is also a space where we take refuge from the outside world. Yet the moment we turn on a tap or flush the toilet, the smallest room is hooked up to the largest of all infrastructural systems: a vast and complex network of pipes, pumps and treatment plants. Bathroom charts the evolution of the bathroom and the habits and lifestyles to which it gave rise. The book considers how and why the bathroom emerged and how it became an international symbol of key modern values of cleanliness, order and progress.