|
The Disability Discrimination Act calls for designers
to deploy their problem-solving skills with sensitivity
to address the access shortcomings of existing buildings.
In this new series, Adrian Cave, Vice Chairman of CAE
and a registered Access Consultant, explores approaches
which respond to the needs of building users and which
are neither philistine nor doctrinaire. The first article
in the series focuses on steps and stairs.
Basic principles
Steps and staircases should provide
routes which are safe and convenient for users, whether
ascending or descending. This must include the needs
of:
- people who need to see or feel
their way with confidence
- people who are frail, have difficulty
in walking or lack confidence. There should, for example,
be suitable handrails on both sides so that someone
who is weak on one side can use the stronger side
when going up or down
The requirements that a well-designed
flight of steps should be easy to see and to feel with
the feet, and that the handrail should provide adequate
support and guidance, does not mean that steps need
brightly coloured handrails or nosings. All these requirements
can be combined with a stair of stylish modern design
with good lighting and no coloured stripes.
Classical staircases
Classical staircases, as used successfully
for hundreds of years, tend to be made of light coloured
stone or marble and to be seen in sunlight or bright
reflected light, where the lines of the treads and nosings
are clearly visible. Often, a change in the colour and
texture of the flooring gives a warning at the top and
bottom of the staircase. Handrails in the classical
or vernacular traditions, and particularly 18th century
designs, are often curved or splayed at the top or bottom
of the stair and, by using a familiar vocabulary, provide
very legible guidance to people who are partially sighted
or blind. When Sir Christopher Wren designed the very
low pitched stairs to the upper floors at The Royal
Hospital Chelsea he was obviously giving careful consideration
to the needs of frail and often severely disabled old
soldiers.
Medieval or traditional vernacular
designs, whether in stone or timber, use decoration,
textures and curves which meet many of the requirements
for people with disabilities. However, the low levels
of illumination place an emphasis on people being able
to feel rather than to see their way in safety.
Modern movement
All this familiar guidance was swept
away by the designers of the Modern Movement in the
1920s and the 1930s. Instead of gently curved stair
nosings which cast a shadow line, and handrails with
florid but informative curves, modern staircases became
geometrically simplified, whether straight or curved,
with minimal handrails which provided less guidance
and support than the traditional versions. This is not
to say that the 'functionalism' of the modern movement
was not functional. On the contrary, the pioneers of
modern design of the Bauhaus and later schools of design
brought a rigorous analysis of anthropometric requirements
and of practical activities to their designs, while
developing a style to express the aesthetics of machine
production. In the most successful work of the Modern
Movement, the new concepts brought an exuberant clarity
of space and light.
Unfortunately, the creative dynamism
of the early days of the modern movement became debased
into a style which was applied with little understanding
all over the world. As a result, the second half of
the 20th century was dominated by buildings and furniture
which are expressive more of the practicalities of machine
production than of the needs of people in general, to
the great disadvantage of disabled people.
Regulations and guidelines
The necessary action against an environment
which was at least inconvenient, and at worst hostile,
to the needs of many users, led to the development of
rules, regulations and guidance for the design of buildings
exemplified by the introduction of the first access
building regulation in 1985. Since then, innumerable
access audits have revealed the inadequacy of concrete
stairs with uniform grey surfaces, with no visual contrasts,
square nosings, short straight handrails and inadequate
fluorescent lighting. The standard solution to these
problems is to provide coloured nosing strips, extended
handrails, textured floor surfaces at the top and bottom
of the stairs plus improved levels of illumination.
At minimal cost, these measures can ensure that a mediocre
and utilitarian building is made more convenient and
safer for people with disabilities and for everyone
else, including children and older people.
Accessibility in practice
It has been very easy for non-designers
to assume that all accessible stairs should have features
such as coloured nosing strips, tactile flooring at
each end of the stair and extended coloured handrails.
However, it should be noted that Part M of the Building
Regulations: Access and facilities for disabled people,
is sensibly less dogmatic and requires, for example,
that 'all step nosings are distinguishable through contrasting
brightness', without specifying the means by which this
is to be achieved. Let us therefore examine some staircases,
both historic and modern, which achieve the main objectives
of Part M with unconventional solutions. Some of these
are more successful than others but the comparisons
illustrate the wide range of possible design solutions
and, particularly, the opportunities provided by new
techniques for directional lighting. |
