You’ve heard of “convergence” in gadgets, now we have the humble toilet (uncomfortably) converging with the hand basin! All in the spirit of saving precious water. A good thing, I hear you say. Well, it definitely is a good thing unless the environmental objective conflicts with a basic functional requirement.
Witness the “Profile™ 5” toilet suite from Caroma.
Let’s check the specs:
- Saves water, tick
- Affordable, tick
- Proven performance, tick
- Ergonomic design, umm… no.
This is where all Caroma’s claims come unstuck. Really, who wants to straddle a toilet bowl to wash their hands in something that ugly?
ARKHITEKTON 
You can find these types of toilets all over in Japan where space saving is not just nice but absolutely required. Often the WC is barely as wide as the commode so putting a sink is not an option.
Chris, I’m not surprised that Japan would have toilets as strange as this one. Only difference with the Caroma version here is that it was developed for saving water, not space.