In the streets of Hamburg, Germany, a new form of urban deterrent is turning public urination into an instant lesson in cause and effect. Known as “anti-pee paint,” this specialized nano-coating creates a superhydrophobic surface, repelling liquids so completely that anything touching it slides off with remarkable force. The result? Anyone attempting to relieve themselves on a treated wall experiences an immediate and unforgettable splash-back. The technology borrows from nature, mimicking the microscopic structure of a lotus leaf. Tiny ridges and air pockets prevent any liquid from adhering, meaning walls remain clean while offenders get an eye-opening consequence — all without the need for confrontation, fines, or patrols. It’s an ingenious blend of physics and human psychology: the paint doesn’t punish with authority, it punishes with instant feedback. First popularized in Hamburg’s St. Pauli district in 2015, this approach has since been trialed in other cities like London and San Francisco. While the coating is costly, city authorities note significant savings on cleaning and maintenance, and a marked decrease in repeat offenses. Beyond hygiene, it’s a striking example of how urban design and material science can work together to shape behavior. For engineers, urban planners, and city residents, anti-pee paint is both a marvel of nano-engineering and a lesson in poetic justice. The streets stay cleaner, the message is immediate, and the offender leaves with a story they won’t soon forget.
This is hostile architecture. Build toilets instead.
They have toilets. People are just wretched.
Not so much in London, and usually you need to pay for the public ones.
Clearly not enough easily accessible toilets for people to not pee on the sides of buildings. If the problem is so big that you’re considering designing hydrophobic pisser punisher paint you clearly don’t have enough places for people to pee.
I’ve been to a very large capital in Europe recently, there’s been a whole three toilets when I needed one, ranging from 15 to 30 minutes away, and the best part is when I got to them, all were inaccessible because they are located inside of the park that closes doors at 18:00 (before that, in fact). The toilets are even marked 24h on the map, very convenient.
So yeah, even not considering drunk people, there are not nearly enough toilets in a lot of places.
Maybe Europe should get some fucking public bathrooms.
Not looking at you, Switzerland, you’re good.
We have them. Its just that a lot of us are such fucking degenerates that we piss and shit on the toilet seats and in the urinals that no one wants to go fucking near them. Others, have are filled with blue lights, so that all the junkies cant see their veins and shoot up somewhere else.
Basically, we cant have nice things because some of us are just utter cunts. Some have been put behind a paywall, but people moaned about that as well. Basically, there are solutions, but nobody wants them because “what about the people who dont have money?”. And the answer “I guess they dont get to shit in the urinals!” is never a welcome one…
In The Netherlands, we don’t have them, but you can piss at most bars and restaurants. Still the drunk guys choose to urinate at the walls, in the plants, in the bicycles, in the stairways of parking lots. It’s gross and annoying.
I’ve heard the blue light thing before, but is it really that much of a thing? When we look for veins, I don’t even see color anymore. It’s tourniquet, squeeze, fondle your armpit, stab you.
The blue light is a thing. And its not limited to toilets in supermarkets and hospitals. Ive seen them under some bridges as well.
The issue though, like you said, is that most can find the vein by touch alone. And others are just so desperate, they try anyway. Giving exactly zero fucks about the blue light. Which has led some to question whether he blue lights are a good thing, or a bad idea thats going to eventually harm someone.
Maybe it’s because it’s still night where I am, maybe it’s because I’m on the spectrum, but those blue lights feel like an assault on my senses. I had to scroll it off my screen to type this because it made my eyes hurt. I can’t imagine having to deal with that every time I have to pee in public.
I also can’t help but wonder where people go to do their makeup. I don’t use makeup, but I often see others using the mirrors to touch up this or that. I can’t imagine blue lights are helpful in that regard.
I welcomed it in the sense I just laughed for 20 seconds
Does that really work? I get the impression that people would go pee on that wall just to see it bounce.
Anything to not build public washrooms
The problem is that public toilets need to be indestructible. The one near my home is constantly out of order because some asshole vandalized it. Restaurants, shops and delis only let customers use their restroom - probably for the same reason.
In Montréal all our major parks have washroom facilities and if they for some reason don’t there’s still gunna be a port-o-potty nearby. There should definitely be two near the beach but the point still stands that you can definitely have nice things, or at least something stopping the majority of public urination. And hell, I’m sure that we have issues with them here, too, but it’s a small price to pay to have a civilized city so whatever.
Longer term the city just needs to adopt any of the myriad studied ways homeless and poverty has been reduced in other places which will also reduce the danger to these things getting broken.
Back in my home country they had these washrooms that were basically giant urinals covered by these side walls so they would get hosed down but they were not for women.
I have seen places in Europe that pull out these portable urinal things and put them all over the entertainment district on Friday nights to prevent drunk dudes pissing all over and it seems to work well
Mooie chemicals to leak onto the environment. This is really a pfas 2.0 waiting to happen
Yup, it’s fucking dumb and Its easily countered by peeing on the wall at an angle as well.
Or better yet, directly onto the ground beside the wall…
Guarantee it’s a PFAS type chemical.
This is what we do instead of creating a better world.
We engineer hydrophobic paint to stop people from peeing on a wall…
I’d argue that keeping piss off of walls is making the world a better place, no? Especially in a high traffic area in dense European cities, the smell can be quite strong
But you do know that you can just not piss up against a wall, and just piss on the ground… right? Or better yet, make a game of it, and piss on the wall at different angles. You and your mates playing piss wars against the wall and trying to avoid each other splashback would be of interest to a lot of pissheads on the way home after finishing the kabab.
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This is creating a better world you dummy
“the streets stay clean” yet the paint ensures that all the piss makes it down to the street
This is what I was thinking… they didn’t get rid of gravity. Also, who pees on the wall, even without a coating it’s going to splash at least a little.
Paint the streets too. Checkmate, pee
If we ripped the car sewers out of our streets we could probably have enough green space that it would just, ya know, soak in. But go ahead and spend public money on technogimmicks I guess.
Just pee directly on to the floor then.
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Cities: “ugh, toilets are so expensive to maintain. Remove them.”
Cities: “everything smells like piss now :(”
If there is no toilets available, a wall or a bush does the trick just fine. I ain’t going to rupture my fucking bladder because some bean counter decided to count beans.
How much does that useless paint cost??
as much as some subcontractors to get rich
Hit it on a 45 degree angle along the horizontal plane and it will bounce onto the shoes of the fella next to you
You just invented a turn-based game to play with friends.
Only way it could truly work is if it were retroreflective.
And that main reason people publicly urinate is because there aren’t any toilets.
It’s not that Hamburg doesn’t have public toilets, but Hamburg is known for the “Reeperbahn” - a street lined with bars (I think the American equivalent to it would be something like Bourbon Street in New Orleans?). People go there to get wasted off their asses and no matter how many public restrooms you put up there, they will piss wherever.
(There’s also an amazing documentary series about the Supermarket on that street and the characters that visit it)
The streets shall run yellow… WITH JUSTICE!
Or just yellow, as everyone takes a big step back and pisses directly on to the ground… Now paint the ground, and we can all have a laugh every time it rains lol.
The ground is just concrete not painted duh
Reading is hard…
I’ll piss right on the ground, fuck it. Der Strom lässt sich nicht aufhalten!
