Construction has begun on the historic Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, California:
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 Thursday officially began construction.
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