The story:
Judged strictly by traditional development standards, the new Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley will be woefully inefficient when it opens in the spring of 2010.
The corridors will be unusually wide. The bathrooms will be unusually large. Doors will be programmed to open by custom motion detectors rather than simple lock and key.
But architect William Leddy measures the design by a different yardstick: its future use by Jan Garrett, who was born without arms or legs but became an attorney and now is executive director of Center for Independent Living, one of the campus' future tenants.
"The goal was to make a building where Jan can come in after hours and move about with no problem at all," said Leddy, whose firm Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects designed the complex that on Sept. 4 officially began construction.
Named after a disabled rights activist who died in 1995, Ed Roberts Campus will be a two-story 86,000-square-foot building directly across Adeline Street from the Ashby BART station. Funding for the $47.5 million project was stitched together with grants and fundraising by the seven disabled service organizations that will occupy the building.
But numbers don't convey why speakers at the groundbreaking ceremony predicted the campus will become a national model. Nor will the long building's clean lines and contemporary look, color provided by wooden slats that double as sun screens and a copper-clad raised skylight.
What's unique will be inside: Every detail will be shaped by the effort to serve the variety of populations covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
The elevators will be double-sized with doors on each end, while the 7-foot-wide corridors will allow two people in wheelchairs to roll together with ease. The corridors also will have handrails for people who need steadying or support, and hard-paneled walls durable enough to take wheelchair bumps.
In each restroom, two stalls will be fully accessible - one with doors convenient for someone right-handed and the other geared to a left-handed user.
Other touches are more subtle, such as a water feature on the north edge of the enclosed central courtyard. It's an aural aide for sight-impaired people navigating the space.
"In the end, it comes down to trying to design a building that is welcoming to as broad a spectrum of people as possible," Leddy said. "It's a gracious way to think about our built environment."
The architectural details draw on Universal Design, a school of thought that aims to make the spaces and tools of daily life convenient for people of all ages and abilities. But experts in the field who have studied the plans say they know of no other non-medical building this ambitious.
"It's absolutely phenomenal they're choosing to do this," said Sean Vance, director of the Center for Universal Design in North Carolina State University's College of Design. "Usually we get architects grabbing hold of one or two principles. To put it all together is something different, especially in a building that's pleasing to look at and socially integrated."
Indeed, the prominent location across from the Ashby BART station will allow for a small cafe at sidewalk level. To the east, a surface parking lot will serve BART commuters who will be able to pass through the building on their way into the station.
The transit access helped bring the campus $22 million in grants from federal, state and local transportation agencies. The keynote speaker at the groundbreaking ceremony was former Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, who predicted that "people will come from all over the country and the world to see what is being done here."
Another speaker was Garrett, who has worked to create such a center since the months after Roberts died in 1995.
"This is a truly a remarkable, historic day," she told the crowd of roughly 200 people, dozens of them in wheelchairs.
"Universal Design can be thought of as something that serves everyone," she said afterward. "It can be done so much more."
