The Global Opportunist[s]: The Orange Bathroom

University residences in Italy [like everywhere] have many shapes and sizes. Some are big, some are small, some have common kitchens, some have mensas. Some are for undergraduate students, some are for doctorate students, some are old and some are new.

This may not seem to be a very interesting variety of residential accommodations for students coming to Milan, but the Politecnico di Milano has managed to keep the international students of the university guessing. This is because the choices, or rather, immutable assignments based on scholarship contracts, span the spectrum from pristine, privatized and ruthlessly regulated dorms to recently converted bachelor apartments in social housing in more depressed areas of the city. Last year for example, I lived in the, let’s just call it the upper end of the Politecnico residence specimens. I consequently found the social control, enforced through strict meal times and an idiotic residence director with a napolean complex, to be quite suffocating [I’ll reserve these tales for another day]. The space was by all accounts objectively beautiful, but the ambience was oppressive.

Now, I live in Casa dello Studente. It holds about 500 students and is located about a five minute stroll from campus. The building itself occupies a whole city block near the university and shares a courtyard with an elementary school. Each floor has common kitchen facilities and suites of two single rooms. Each suite has a common bathroom and food preparation area with no stove. I learned to my dismay that the building was originally a hospital during World War II. This means that, during the course of its existence, people have died here. This of course flies right in the face of my “no bad juju” rule for places where I live, but since it’s a free place to say, I’ll have to just smudge the space with burning bay leaves and lavendar before entering and exiting and sleep with a circle of toothpaste around my bed.

These first photos may lead you to believe that it is in fact a normal residence that you may happen to fine at any large university across the globe. A room with a desk and a view is fairly standard.

Wait though, here we see how the experience here gets somewhat quirky. Here, for example, we find a specimen of Italanglish with the rules and regulations for cleaning.

Of course though like everything else in Milan, here you have to dig a little deeper to truly see what makes this space so great. Walking into the the white hallway of the suite, your eyes are immediately drawn to this wonder of human innovation: the orange bathroom.

The bathroom itself is no more than a single square meter. It holds a toilet, a shower and sink, with the shower corner being slightly lower than the rest of the floor to allow for the drainage of water. The walls, ceilings and floors have been covered with single pieces of seemingly plastic orange paneling. It’s by all definitions a work of art. A relic of Euro-chic design from years gone by. A micro-space, serving all basic hygiene functions in style.

What is it? Who designed it? What architect deemed it essential to insert this burst of color amidst the monotonous hallways of a former hospital? Why the bathroom?

And more. The cat curtains? Is this room somehow a time portal to the the 70’s? Am I meant to pick a mood in the morning based on the first corresponding cat that I happen to contemplate?

I still have to figure out the proper yoga position to optimize cleansing in such a confined space, but I can safely say that I will have to ponder this bathroom for a long, long time. Being inspired by the bold bright colors, I put red sheets on my bed.