Designing for the disabled

User-friendly Building optimizes disabled access

By Trine Tsouderos
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 19, 2007


The front door at Access Living's old headquarters on Roosevelt Road closed way too fast for Pearl Mathews.

She would hit the button to automatically open the door, but then it would close on her and her wheelchair halfway through.

No longer. The disability rights organization's new building in River North has automatic sliding doors that whoosh open -- and stay open -- as Mathews, a housing counselor, approaches in her chair. "It's like they are just there waiting for me," she said.

The entry is just one feature of the new building, which was designed to go far beyond what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires. Rather, the building was built with "universal design" in mind, meaning it was built to be user-friendly for people with and without disabilities (the building is environmentally friendly to boot).

The 50,000-square-foot commercial office building at 115 W. Chicago Ave., is the first of its kind in Chicago and is among the first in the nation, built as proof, its owner said, that universal design doesn't mean expensive and it doesn't mean institutional.

Institutional was the last thing architect Jack Catlin, partner at Wheaton based LCM Architects, wanted.

"We wanted lively," he said.

At first glance, the Access Living headquarters, which opened in February, looks like a modern, light-filled office building. The outside is brick and glass, the inside is airy thanks to an atrium. The walls are brightened with art. The furniture is sleek and contemporary.

But a closer look reveals many subtle, important differences. At the entrance, there's a wheelchair ramp cut into the curb in front of the building. Heating elements under the concrete sidewalks melt ice and snow, making it easier for people using wheelchairs to enter and exit, and preventing them from dragging the slushy mess inside.

The entire sidewalk in front of the building slopes oh-so-slightly from the street-grade alleys on either side of the building, saving wheelchair users from steep ramps. A thick, dark, grooved line leads from a drop-off spot on the sidewalk through automatic double doors to the reception desk to help people with visual impairments and developmental disabilities find their way simply.

"There's nothing special about this," Catlin said. "It's just about doing the research. It's about thinking about things upfront."

A good example of that is Access Living's entrance itself: What kind of doorway would work best for the most people and, at the same time, be as environmentally friendly as possible?

"We had a big battle over the doorway," said Marca Bristo, Access Living's president and CEO.



Principles

The doorway, they knew, had to be automatic and at street level. No steps. One of the seven principles of "universal design," a concept developed by disability architecture pioneer Ron Mace, is that everything should be as simple and intuitive as possible, meaning that it doesn't take any special knowledge or effort for anybody to, say, enter a building. Access Living also wanted the entry to be as energy-efficient as possible.

Catlin, who uses a wheelchair, suggested a big automatic revolving door, which would keep heated and cooled air from escaping while accommodating all kinds of users.

"We asked folks their opinions about that, and some were adamantly uncomfortable with that," said Bristo, who also uses a wheelchair. Users of large power chairs said revolving doors -- even large ones -- were nerve-racking, while people with visual impairment said such doors were hard to use because each one is just a little bit different.

"My question was always: Is it green and is it universal?" said Bristo, who wants the building to receive Silver LEED certification, a prestigious, national, 'green'-building benchmark. "If the answer was no, I would push people to go back to the drawing board."

Catlin returned with large automatic sliding double doors and an air curtain in the vestibule for energy efficiency. "Everything you see was thought of in many different ways," he said.

Throughout the building are scores of other features chosen for their universal user-friendliness. The refrigerator in the kitchen is a side-by-side design, which is easier for people in wheelchairs to use. The hallways are 6 feet 8 inches wide -- enough to accommodate two people in wheelchairs and a person walking by. The sinks in the restrooms are shallow, leaving more legroom underneath for people in wheelchairs. Like those in airports, the restrooms themselves have no entry doors (the stalls do, of course), making entering and exiting easier.



Making adjustments

The cubicle work spaces are adjustable inch by inch, making it possible to accommodate people of different sizes and needs. Elevators open on both sides to hurry loading and unloading passengers with wheelchairs. Every evacuation stairwell is supplied with special evacuation chairs, which make it possible for for a person in a wheelchair to be guided safely down stairs. Everywhere, everything is automatic -- lights, shades, water fountains, fire doors.

"It's really a lot of silly little things that add up," said Karen Washington, an employment-readiness skills coordinator at Access Living.

In the elevator, for example, the Braille now is next to the buttons for the floors, said Washington, who is visually impaired. When the Braille is on top of the buttons, she often would inadvertently push buttons for wrong floors while reading the Braille with her fingers, she said.

Virtually everything in the building was purchased off-the-shelf from typical suppliers. One of the only custom-made items in the building is a stainless-steel typewriter built into the elevator wall, allowing deaf passengers to communicate in case of an emergency.

The total construction cost for the four-story building, which also has a "green" roof, was almost $9.8 million. Furnishings ran $1.2 million. The total project cost, including line items such as architect's fees and land (which was purchased from the city at a steep discount), was $12.9 million. "That's a good price," Catlin said.

"We want people to know how easy it is to do," he said, "once they know the right questions to ask."