Accessing One Memorial Drive
The other day I had a meeting st the East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the St. Louis regional MPO. The building houses a number of firms as well as KMOV Channel 4 and KMOX radio. I’ve been here numerous times before — including one in my wheelchair.
As you approach the building entry, above, you see the revolving door and individual doors to each side. Obviously a wheelchair is not going through the revolving door. So two choices remain. Many buildings have door openers that can be activated by button — a nice feature.
There is the button just below the black square. Interestingly they didn’t put the opener on the door on the left with the level sidewalk. They opted for the door with the angled sidewalk. In my power wheelchair this is not a major problem but anyone in a manual chair would have issues. When walking with a cane I often use the openers to help with doors but I wouldn’t even think of walking near that button.
So often designers making decisions don’t realize how bad their choices are. This door was probably selected over the left door because it is closer to the elevators. The person that made the decision on which of the two doors would get the auto opener had a 50/50 chance of getting it right… or getting it wrong.
– Steve Patterson
My guess is that the security system (the big black square) was there first, and they just used the same conduit to wire in the new ADA door controller. Plus, since we drive on the right, we tend to walk on the right, which likely explains why both are located on the right side of the entrance. Still, that doesn’t address your forward access concerns – I probably would’ve advised the owners to swap the two doors, as well, placing the hinges next to the revolving door and using the sidelight areas to provide more usable access room for people with disabilities.
The placement of the buttons for a lot of Accessible doors like this is notoriously an afterthought. I’ve noted my wife’s (who uses a power chair) disdain for this. Definitely the boys at One Memorial just said “Hey, we need an automatic door for the wheelchair folks” and no one took another thought about how it should be placed. Seems to be the way it goes in a lot places unfortunately.
Max…
Even from an aesthetic perspective, that entrance looks very cold, dated, and run-down.
I also think that you’re using the term designer a bit loosely here – I wouldn’t be surprised if the contractor who retrofitted the door with the automatic opener “selected” the button location with the building manager, and neither one was too concerned with real functionailty, just with meeting the letter of the new law at the lowest cost . . .