In 2022-23, the Institute Community and Equity Office and the Office of Campus Planning sponsored a Campus Inclusive Restroom Study to outline an approach to improve inclusivity in MIT’s nearly 700 public, non-residential restrooms, which occupy more than 200,000 square feet of space across the Cambridge campus.
MIT engaged JSA/MIXdesign, a cross-disciplinary team of subject matter experts including designers, facilitators, and regulatory advisors. In addition to benchmarking peer institution precedents and best practices, the study team engaged many stakeholders across the Institute, including diversity, equity, and inclusion staff; facilities staff; the All-Gender Restrooms Working Group; the Disability Employee Resource Group; Student Disability Services; and the Office of Religious, Spiritual and Ethical Life.
The study resulted in the creation of a toolkit of guidelines for restroom design and planning principles for restroom distribution. Project teams at MIT are now piloting the restroom design guidelines in renovation, new construction, and minor retrofit projects. The restroom distribution framework considers the mix of restroom types across MIT’s main campus and will be used to inform future plans to renovate existing restrooms or build new inclusive restrooms.
View the Executive Summary video below.
Design Guidelines
The MIT Inclusive Restroom Design Guidelines account for the intersecting ways MIT’s diverse population uses the restroom and considers needs associated with disability (e.g., people with mobility, sensory, and neurodiversity challenges), gender (e.g., women, trans, and non-binary folks), and culture (e.g., race and/or religion.) The guidelines describe recommended layouts, adjacencies, materials, fixtures, and accessories for each restroom type and provide a tool for improving inclusivity in existing and new restrooms at MIT.
Offering the following restroom types will provide greater user choice on campus:
- Single-sex multi-user (men’s and women’s) restrooms provide separate spaces for men and women for washing, grooming, and toileting. With the adoption of the Inclusive Restroom Design Guidelines, these restrooms can be designed to better support a wider diversity of users with the addition of inclusive components like sanitary dispensers and disposals in both men’s and women’s rooms.
- Inclusive single-user restrooms provide a fully private room for any and all users. Additionally, they offer enhanced privacy for restroom activities as well as amenities to support caregivers with children.
- Inclusive multi-user restrooms treat the restroom as a single open space that can be used by people of different abilities, ages, cultures, genders, races, and religions. These restrooms include options for conducting some or all activities in private based on users’ individual needs and preferences.
Distribution Planning Principles
Restroom distribution planning is an ongoing and iterative process whereby MIT planners apply planning principles to inform decisions and guide the implementation of projects to convert, refresh, modify, and construct restrooms across campus.
The Restroom Study recommended the following set of broad planning principles and criteria to guide the distribution of restroom types and identify opportunity locations for inclusive multi-user restrooms on MIT’s Cambridge campus:
- Locate all restroom types within a reasonable distance for members of the community, to reduce travel and wait times.
- Prioritize improvements with the greatest impact across all restroom types to improve access, usability, and comfort consistently for all users.
- Plan projects to advance inclusivity within practical limitations such as budgetary and physical constraints, regulatory compliance, and environmental sustainability goals.
These recommendations help planning teams prioritize restrooms for inclusive improvements across the different restroom types, taking into consideration opportunities provided by new building or renovation projects and by MIT’s ongoing restroom renewal program. Over time, restroom conversions and renewals as well as new restroom projects will make restrooms more inclusive across campus and provide a variety of choices for all users.
Resources
- Visit the beta digital restroom directory to access a map of restrooms by type and location. Help us improve the accuracy of this directory—send any edit recommendations to our team.
- For restroom change requests, contact your department leadership who can submit requests for consideration through the Committee for Renovation and Space Planning space-change process (CRSP).
- For restroom maintenance or repair needs, submit a service request through Atlas.
- Contact the team with any questions or if you would like to learn more about work underway to create inclusive restrooms on campus.
Executive Summary
View the Campus Inclusive Restroom Study Report (MIT authentication required).
Executive summary of the Campus Inclusive Restroom Study Report:
To access an interactive transcript of the video, click "Watch on YouTube" at the bottom left corner of the video. On the YouTube page, below the video, click “…more” in the grey box below the Facilities logo, then choose “Show transcript”.