Written on April 30, 2009 – 5:59 am | by Maria Mihale |
When it comes to toilets, people are not very pretentious. They don’t really care about the way their toilet looks like, about the color or things like that. Actually, if you think about it, that would be the last straw, for people to start complaining about the toilet and the fact that it doesn’t suit to their needs or preferences. As far as I’m concerned, a toilet should be clean! It should be the cleanest thing ever, I might add, but no more than that.



However, it seems that people are more interested in the design of such a fixture, which leads to all sorts of weird models that you wouldn’t have think of in a million years.

As a consequence, a team of students of the ASU College of Design was given the ultimate recognition during this spring for a unique toilet design concept by the NDI (also known as Northwest Design Invitational). Called Go With the Flo, the toilet was designed by a team led by John Takamura and Dosun Shin, who are members of the College of Design faculty, and Tamara Christensen, respective Dean Bacalzo, who are both students of the Master of Science in Design.



At first glance, you might think that the toilet is similar with the squat toilets that are so uncomfortable, but, according to the designers, this one is based on yoga principles, helping those who use to work their abdominal and back muscles.

“The Flo toilet is an ergonomic, sustainable design concept for baby boomers that functions like a squat toilet. Designers maintain that using the Flo toilet is akin to yoga – by building and strengthening abdominal and back muscles. Only one-half to one gallon of water is used for flushing and The Flo reuses water from hand washing. To flush water from the tanks to the toilet, the Flo employs an electromagnetic ball valve.”

The best thing about the Flo is that is entirely eco-friendly, as it not depends on electric power whatsoever. I don’t really know if this is how the best toilet would/will look like, but it would be nice for the Flo to hit the mass production someday.

(Source: ASU via coolest-gadgets.com)