Ideal Locker Room Design?

My question is what would your Ideal locker room design be?

Would you prefer a different design for different locations such as:

During High School?
During College?
At the Gym?
At work?
At the pool?
At other places where you have to change clothes?

I created a sketch of a locker room design that I feel would be ideal for a School setting, where mandatory showers were required, and towels are provided.

I know the sketch is sorta hard to understand I'm still in the process of creating a computer aided sketch.

Here are some of the features:

A large locker area with benches to change with several different sections that could be caged off if needed (I only mention this because I know in my hs locker room the lockers were separated into groups and then the different groups were separated by floor to ceiling cage like mesh, this was used as a way to assist in preventing theft as the sections that were not needed for specific classes to be closed off)

A large open shower area with no partitions that has both pole and wall showers (I know that I personally prefer open showers, as I don't like the claustrophobic feeling of the little shower cubicles, which are especially bad in a retrofit type of situation because they are usually rather cramped and I don't want to accidentally touch the walls/curtain for fear of bacteria as I know they most likely don't get cleaned as much as they need to be) [This is especially a concern now with the MERSA cases that have been going around the country]

A Laundry area for uniform/towel washing right in the locker room. With a Window to the locker area on both sides of the shower. So the uniforms can go in one side before students enter the shower and they can get a clean towel from the other window once they finish showering.

And A set of small personal size lockers for certain sports gear that you want to use daily that doesn't require laundering like helmets, certain pads, kick boards, goggles, etc.

As I know when I was in school some kids didn't take their gym clothes home for an entire semester and didn't change their underwear etc and wore sweaty clothes around all day. I would strongly recommend re instituting having the school provide and launder uniforms (Including Shirts, Shorts, Jocks, Socks, Swim wear - Brief style). All to be sorted by size only for ease of laundering and speed of distribution each day.

The locker room also includes a lot of urinals and several stalls, along with multiple sinks, as I know in our gym and pool locker rooms when I was in hs we only had one urinal, one sink, and one toilet (that wasn't even portioned off) in the locker room and it made it extremely difficult for those of us who did care about hygiene to get ready in the allotted time period. I would also possibly recommend using a slightly taller than half wall for the urinals so people who are using the restroom area can stay connected to the activities going on in the rest of the locker room area.

Other innovative features that I would like to see would be:

Fingerprint/Keypad lockers (so there are no keys to be lost during sport/in the showers, as keys are a definite hassle, and it would be much easier to update this in the event of a compromised combination)

And also have a specially designed locker venting system to remove moisture from items that are in there so that the locker room does not get an odor and items stay more sanitary. It was always so gross when someone one would pull a moldy swimsuit or moldy underwear out of their locker that had been in there for months.

Other features that are not shown in my design, but would be great to be included:

Steamroom
Whirlpool/Hot Tub
Meeting Room
Resting Room

Please look at this sketch and if you have a drawing of your own or a print of the blueprints of an actual locker room that you like that would be great so we can all visualize the different designs.

If you don't have a picture, please provide a description of your ideal locker room.

Attached Images

Locker Room.jpg (53.9 KB, 1316 views)

Yea Natural Light and Natural Air would definatly be a nice plus. The YMCA that I've been to the Boys Locker room seems to be a real petri dish, its down in the basement and the light is funky and its always got old water in the showers. And the Adult Men's Locker room isn't much better, its got a carpet floor in the locker area which is always damp, and the showers/bathroom/whirlpool/sauna are separated from the rest of the changing area so its not as humid, but the light is still bad (they sure like florescent)

Would be awesome if someone could invent a self drying shower, so from one class/person to the next that it would be dry. (that would probably make them a lot cleaner too, since germs love it when they stay wet, and that allows for easy transmission from one person to the next.)

It would be divided into two sections, peeking and non-peeking. haha peeps on here would still gripe.

I think nice lockers, wide open shower, good air circulation, enough room you can bend over to dry your toes and not bump butts with someone else.

Having a lot of natural light sources would be beneficial as it helps kill of the bacteria naturally but also is more forgiving on naked flesh than those harsh yellow ones that a lot of the newer gyms seem to favour. Actually, maybe having the shower area with a glass roof that is one sided, as in you can see you but others cannot see in, would be good to give a feeling of being free and out in nature and at the same time give you a feeling of warmth and 'naturality' if that even is a word lol.

As for the shower situation itself, get rid of those dividing walls and go back to the open room or gang showers that a lot of our older posters here have commented about when they were going to high school or college. It will force guys to get over the nudity and penis size issue and actually get it through that in the locker room a naked man is not something that is scary and should be hidden away, while having no dividing walls would limit the places bacteria and disease and build up and spread.

My god, i wish i had enough time to think of random things like this....

My ideal locker room would have the showers set up in the center with shower heads coming from a single pole for 360o use. I can visualize it now......dozens of hot guys in a circle washing their muscular bodies and dangling cocks. LOL

no matter what kind of facility you provide, guys who are afraid of seeing/being seen will merely work out and then go directly home. Sad, isn't it?

This is true, but this partially the reason for this set up in a hs or college setting, where the facility/school provides the uniforms and launders them daily, so this would require that everyone changes there clothes in the locker room and if your getting naked to strip at the clothes in window, and then have to walk directly thru the shower area, that would increase the amount of guys that shower.

A rule like this could also be applied to public gyms, or if not making it a rule, but just by providing a monthly clothing rental where the gym launders your personal uniform daily then that would give people more of a reason to change and shower, and then they wouldn't have to mess with washing there clothes at home.

I know when I was attending ball state they had a system like this where you could keep shorts and a shirt on a loop and then they would keep them on an overhead conveyor when they were clean but not in use. The athletic department didn't officially give jocks to be worn, but I do remember seeing jock on some people's loops, I was always amazed that they didn't have underwear of some type as part of this plan, since clean shorts and a shirt isn't going to be any good without anything to wear under them. I can't imagine doing a running workout while free balling.

I'm not shy of my body but I still prefer private shower... otherwise no big deal neither.

P.S. You are a terrible drawer lol you loose a lot of space for nothing (just a advise)

Ideal locker room would have unisex communial showers. Now THAT would be HOT.

that would be sexy......

The plumbing would be tuned for strong and steady water pressure. There is nothing like a shower massage after a hard workout.

The wet areas and the dry areas would be separated and the floor (especially in the bathroom and the shower room) constantly wiped clean.

I know, my drawing is not to scale by any means, its just a sketch, I need to redo it on graph paper to make better/more accurate use of space. The main reason I drew it was just to show the general concept of design that I was referring to.

Any CAD people on here? that could assist in making a more technical drawing?