[ Page 4 of 8 ]

By Barbara Knecht

Something for everyone

“We never used the term ‘universal design’ during the design process,” comments Janeann Upp, executive director of the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) in Washington [record, August 2003, page 111], designed by Antoine Predock with Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen. “However, way-finding was a major consideration throughout our discussions, along with Predock’s vision that the building retain some mystery as it unfolds.” She continues, “I came from museums where people were always lost. You will notice that we have virtually no signage, yet people return their museum maps unused.”

TAM is a small building that features a grand processional ramp, inspired by nearby Mt. Ranier, as the major circulation spine. It wraps around an open-air stone garden, and the galleries wrap around the ramp. In the usual sequential course of viewing the galleries, one will naturally return to the central ramp and the garden to pass to the next gallery. There is also a diminutive stair along the exterior wall. It is tucked almost invisibly within the depth of the wall separating two galleries, in a clever reversal of the usual primacy of stairs. By featuring the ramp, there is an equality of movement through the galleries. “The only place that doesn’t work that well is the last bit leading to the education wing,” comments Upp. “People don’t seem to know they can continue up there. We are working on using some art or perhaps some signage to draw them on.”

 

A ramp leads to new rooms, and natural light floods the concourse and penetrates the basement level. Photography: © Jeff Goldberg/ESTO

To wander through a building with so little signage is a welcome relief. Museums are filled with first-time visitors, and the TAM administration has tested and monitored how the building has performed for them. Signage will remain in our lives, but in a truly universally designed world, millions of those little blue “handicap accessible” signs could be eliminated.

Airports face an even more complex challenge to move occasional users to their destinations easily. The consequences of being lost in a museum are minor; being lost and confused in an airport is another matter. Boston-based Coco Raynes Associates has developed a way-finding system for the Charles de Gaulle Airport’s Terminal 2C. The terminal installation was completed in 2002, using products designed more than 10 years ago by Coco Raynes, the firm’s principal. The beauty of Raynes’s solution is that it has many applications: It can be adapted for existing non–universally designed environments. “Gérard Besson, chief architect of the airport, chose our system because it could be retrofitted into existing construction as well as used in new construction,” explained Raynes.