Autostadt: Technical Flair with Design Elegance

Autostadt
StadtBrücke
38440 Wolfsburg
Germany


http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/company/factories
http://www.autostadt.de/portal/site/www/


Where is it?

If you drive a Volkswagen that is in any way modern take this tip before you leave the car. Take a note of exactly which slot in which row of the car park you are in. Then take a note of exactly which car park. Then on the walk to the museum, chalk a mark on the road every so often to help you on the way back. Virtually nobody, and I mean nobody in this town drives anything other than a Volkswagen. Believe you me this will save you from having to wait until every other person has left in the evening to find your car.

Once you get to the main building, enter the main doors and head into the building towards the information desk. Towards the right you’ll see a set of stairs that head down in to the basement. Down there you will find a gently lit subterranean hall. Head across the hall towards the left and you’ll find the toilets.


What’s it like?

OK why the big deal about checking where you parked here? Well this is Wolfsburg and Wolfsburg is Volkswagen. We left town as the shift changed and I’m not kidding you that the 3-lane highway was jammed with cars, every one a VW. The hunt around the car park could easily take enough time for three pit stops in the toilet if you happened to forget exactly where your car is.

Autostadt is the VW museum. I didn’t expect to spend more than a couple of hours here, but was surprised to find myself leaving 6 hours later. Really, this is a good family day out, which is as cool for the kids as for the car enthusiast. As well as some of the older European cars, and the last Beetle to come of the Brazilian production line in 2003, each of the VW owned brands has a section of the park. Bentley, Audi, Skoda, etc are all in attendance. The restaurants are also pretty damned good. Honestly, great waiter service and a huge pizza and beer for less than 10 euro is good any time.

What impressed me most about the whole set up was the attention to detail and design. This is the same for the toilets too. Quality doors to the entry. Hugh coloured glass dividers between the stalls all start you thinking these are not just any toilets. Come on, they even has a separate small toilet set just for the kids.

Then you hit on the square sinks. The first thing you think is that they shriek of the impracticality you sometimes get in the more fancy restaurants. But then, when using them, you forget they’re so fancy after all. They’re somehow easy to use, and you find yourself just using them with ease.

What makes these toilets so good is what makes you think they look just a little stark before you walk in. They’ve been designed by car designers. For all the fancy looks they are so easy to use. They work! I guess this is a product of having the best car designers around. Things in cars these days have to look good and be easy to live with. If they don’t people just don’t buy your cars. Volkswagen know this and have certainly managed to transfer it to these toilets.


Marks out of 10:

9. Superb to look at and practical with it.


Comments to the management:

Solid, sound, practical, technical marvel…

Darkness Rules at Daniel Boulud Brasserie

Daniel Boulud Brasserie at the Wynn
Las Vegas Resort and Country Club
Las Vegas, NV USA

http://www.danielnyc.com/dbbrasserie/

Where is it?

This fantastic restaurant overlooks the Wynn Hotel's lagoon, which sits on the south side of the hotel. Just follow the signs to the lagoon and head to the bottom level of the hotel.

Once inside, go to the very back of the place to find the toilets. It's one of those restaurants that occupies a long, narrow space (to supply diners with solid views of the lagoon and its somewhat psychedelic nightly light show -- which features some nifty singing animatronics, fancy lighting effects, piped-in music and the like), so to get there you'll enter the restaurant, pass the greeter's counter, head through the two-tiered dining room, and enter a dimly lit hallway in the back of the place (it's adjacent to the kitchen entrance). Head all the way to the back of that hallway to find the bathrooms.

What's it like?

As I said, this is an outstanding French restaurant, offering the creations of a chef that many consider to be one of the best in the USA. The menu consists of traditional brasserie fare, with a touch of Americanism thrown in. There's a hamburger here that's stuffed with foie gras and braised beef short ribs, a succulent beef en daube, tantalizing 32 oz ribeye, delicious crock of Belgian-style mussels, an outrageously delicious homemade charcuterie platter and more. Fantastic food -- and set in a boisterous but friendly neo-Roman-inspired dining room (lots of columns and arched enclaves) that overlooks the aforementioned. (It also happens to be reasonably priced by Las Vegas Strip standards. Our meal came to $140 for four full courses with wine, which isn't that bad for this tourist mecca, if you think about it.)

Of course, the restaurant is dimly lit, and while that makes for a more elegant setting, it creates a slightly off-putting effect in the bathrooms. Because they are at the back of the restaurant, and at the end of a hallway, the bathrooms here tend to serve as a net for all the noise coming from the kitchen and dining room. This makes for a bit of a noisy bathroom-going experience.

Don't get me wrong: These are elegant facilities. The walls and floor are single color slabs of sleek color. The toilet stalls (like at other Strip-restaurant hotel bathrooms) are fully separated rooms. The vanity is a stylish metallic counter featuring two trough-like sinks and a giant mirror behind it. The urinals are mounted to the walls in a way that heightens the sheerness of the walls (like they are in Okada, also in the Wynn). The decor is spare but appropriate -- dried tree branches dangle beside the vanity and in a few other spaces, adding to the minimalism portrayed here.

Yet it's dim and loud, and when those characteristics are coupled they make the place feel a little too busy for business, if you know what I mean. The effect is even worse when another person is in the room with you -- all that noise and dim lighting make you feel like you're surrounded and ultimately prove to be a bit suffocating. This is a classic case of design not being able to overcome the obstacles against it.

Marks out of 10:

7. A very nice bathroom. It just falls prey to the elements around it.

Comments to the Management:

The decor is great, as are the facilities. You just need to create a greater sense of isolation here. Dim lighting alone doesn't do it.

Blinding are the Lights at THE QUOD

Quod Brasserie,
92 - 94 High Street,
Oxford.
OX1 4BJ
United Kingdom

http://www.quod.co.uk/location.html


Where is it?

From the entrance head to the right past the bar towards the right hand wall. The entrance to the toilets is half way down the restaurant on the right hand wall. The mens’ is then on the right.


What’s it like?

The QUOD is in the centre of historic Oxford, but there’s nothing old fashioned about this trendy bar come restaurant. From the cool bar that inevitably meets you in the centre of restaurant floor, to the restored brick this place exudes cool, but cool that has good historic foundations in a converted Georgian banking hall building.

The Quod gets its name from the colleges around and about. Magdalene, Merton, Brasenose, University, All Souls and Queens are all within spitting distance, although you’d not do something as uncouth round here? The food is surprisingly good for a location that could sell itself to the tourists without any problem. Its not got top restaurant flair or quality, but then again it isn’t top restaurant prices either. All in all it’s a good place to meet friends and have a bite to eat before going on for a pint or two elsewhere.

The toilets are also pretty damned cool too. The stainless steel finish on almost everything and the bright lighting literally blinded me when I walked in. Shiny is not the word for it. And no I’d not had one too many, I was the driver this particular evening. Once my eyes adjusted to the lighting levels it was easy to see the quality of ‘mosaic’ tile on the wall and decent stone on the floor. These facilities felt like they were made to last, like the rest of the building.

Add to this that they were pretty damned clean, if a little busy on this particular Thursday night, then you have what I can only say is a pretty good effort at stylish toilets in keeping with a great location.


Marks out of 10:

9 – for the cool style in a historic setting.


Comments to the management:

Keep up the cool – and maybe cool down the lighting?

Okada Offers Oasis of Opulence

Okada
Wynn Las Vegas
3131 Las Vegas Blvd S
Las Vegas, NV USA 89109

http://www.wynnlasvegas.com/

Where is it?

Finding the restaurant is increasingly more difficult than finding the restroom once you are there. To be honest, I have no idea how I stumbled upon this place -- we were just walking through the Wynn to see the sights while waiting for our dinner reservations at Daniel Boulud (reviewed later this week) and roamed into a back corner of the mega-hotel to find this place. Seeing that we had to use the restroom at the time, the discovery couldn't have been more opportune.

So, you may have to ask someone on Wynn's staff how to get there. But once there, and once inside, head down the hallway to the left of the greeting counter and you'll find the bathrooms there.

What's it like?

This is a classy, upscale Japanese place filled with black marble glass, curvaceous tables and lots of shiny wood fixtures. It's also not as expensive as one would assume -- most sushi and Japanese places I passed on the Strip won't let you get out of there without spending at least $20 per California roll. This one was at about half of that (decent for Strip prices, if you think about it) and boasted a pretty varied and impressive menu to boot.

Unfortunately the kitchen wasn't open on my visit so I was unable to sample the food. (I'll definitely be trying to next time I visit Vegas.) However, the people here were kind enough to let me use the bathroom. I am in their debt for this.

The facilities here offer a Zen-like approach, much like the one found at the outstanding Sensi at the Bellagio. But unlike that place, which offers amazing solace for only one person, this bathroom can accommodate more people at once while still providing an environment that feels private, spiritual, sophisticated, clean and practical.

What impresses you first about this place is the decor. The floors are covered with off-white stone tile that resemble the pattern found on a stone path in rural Japan, if you will. The walls alternate between jet single colors of black and light brown, and the fixtures (like in Sensi) stick out from the walls as if they were pieces of modern art. The urinals are small, yet functional and elegant, almost flower-like in design (as if Georgia O'Keefe has created them), and the stalls serve more like private rooms than mere stalls. The fact that everything is spotless (granted, I was here before the place opened) made it all the more amazing.

The centerpiece here is the vanity. Featuring two stations, the area boasts flat glass sinks that drain away water in soft-flowing sheets (like an infinity pool), personalized mirrors behind each sink, and two faucets that look and work like spigots from a water spring (they contain motion sensors to get the water flowing, of course, but still it's pretty neat). Metallic soap dispensers and ring towers of thick paper towels sit in the gaps between each sink station. It's elegant, sleek and functional.

Marks out of 10:

11. Heavenly on all accounts.

Comments to the Management:

Normally, I would suggest adding a divider wall between the urinals, but then that would ruin the decorative perfection of this place..... so I've got nothing......

What’s the Stink?

The Stinking Rose
325 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA USA 94133

http://www.thestinkingrose.com/

Where is it?

When you go through the front door there is a bar in front of you. Head towards the bar and then left. The door to the rest rooms is in on the right in the corner. Go through the door and you’ll find the toilets across the hallway.


What’s it like?

The Stinking Rose is by all means a favourite of many people I know. No less than 3 people had, unprompted, told me to eat in this place before I got across the States. Taking their name from their most used ingredient, Garlic, this place prides itself on using the vegetable in every meal they offer. Does that sound appetising? Well I wasn’t so sure.

One of the first things you notice though is that this place is fun. They have the longest garlic braid (348 feet long). And they also have a garlic making machine (well I think its that) over the bar.

The food was also excellent. The 40-clove roast chicken with garlic mash was one of the best meals on my trip, at a reasonable price too. The garlic was not too prominent and complimented both the chicken and mash well. There was also a good selection of beer that sliped down well with the chicken. Nevertheless, having met a similar concept at the Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight in the UK [http://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/] I gave the Garlic Ice cream a miss.

Given the garlic odours in the restaurant you might expect the toilets to smell a bit too. Well they didn’t smell, but they were pretty bear unkempt and unfriendly place to be. The first thing you notice when you go in, given that this is a set up for a single person, is how large they are. I guess this doesn’t help give a friendly feel, but I’m not so sure that it explained why they were so cold. Honestly, you want to speed through just because of the temperature. Then there is the décor. You notice that the place is pretty dark and then you see that the walls are covered in grime. Dirty is not the word for it. When it comes out on the photo’s you know they’re dirty as hell.

Beyond this you’d have to say the basins etcetera were obviously cleaned. And there was a veritable overload of different toilet papers ready for use. So, its not that there was no effort being put in to keeping these toilets clean, it’s the general feeling that the room as a whole was on the verge of irretrievable decay.

My verdict has to be that unlike the restaurant itself these toilets are not a fun place to be.

Marks out of 10:

5 – You might use the utilities without fear, but they’d certainly not be your first choice!


Comments to the management:

Such a fun place to eat, but your toilets are in dire need of refurbishment.