One of my favourite accessible buildings

Tony Heaton

Here's one of my favourite accessible buildings. It's a bit obvious but I have always loved the German pavilion by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was built for the Barcelona International Exposition in 1929 and dismantled the year after but it is one of modernism's seminal works.



It was reconstructed in the mid-1980's on the original site. It has level access throughout and its clean lines are created by large surfaces of glass and stone with columns of high chromuim-content steel. The walls and floor are different kinds of marble - travertine green marble and onyx.

It's a great small building for a wheelchair user to just glide through. Whilst the building is accessible wheelchair users have to go round the back (no change there then!) This minor inconvenience is made gleeful by knowing that you are about to wheel through a very carefully raked shale garden, I advise you to create as many wheel marks as possible in this pristine shale as a small but significant rite of passage.



The Faith House building by architect Tony Fretton that I project managed as part of my role as Director of Holton Lee owes something I am sure to this wonderful pavilion.

Tony Heaton

PS the sculpture is by Georg Kolbe and is called Morning.