Moving through
Platform lift
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A motorized platform or chair that carries a person, with or without a wheelchair, up a short change in level or along a staircase.
What it solves
It provides access where a ramp does not fit or an elevator is not justified. It is a frequent solution when adapting existing buildings.
Today
Use it when there is no other option, with a large platform, edges that keep the wheelchair from rolling off, controls the person can operate alone and rain protection if it is outdoors. Provide backup power so no one is left halfway.
Common mistake
Installing it without a maintenance plan, so it does not work when someone needs it.
Tomorrow
Providing from the design stage a space and a slab able to take one avoids expensive works when the family ages. Several dwellings in the same building can share one next to the common stair.
Where it comes from
- 1Industrial era Pennsylvania, United States, 1920s
An inventor builds the prototype of an inclined chair to help a sick friend move between floors. - 2Accessible transport United States, 1993
More than 29,000 city buses already had a wheelchair lift or ramp.
Masters
- Rem Koolhaas House in Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, 1998
For an owner in a wheelchair he designs an open platform of three by three and a half meters that rises and descends between the three floors and works as a study. He teaches that accessibility can be the center of a house.
Appears in the routes
See also
Also in Moving through
Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.