Bauhaus Exploration Workshop – A tour and creative workshop for blind and partially sighted visitors

Building and transport information: RIBA, 66

This document has been prepared for visitors who have booked a place on the Bauhaus Exploration Workshop taking place at the RIBA on Saturday 25th January 2020.

General public information about how to get to the Royal Institute of British Architects and the building is available online on our website. In this document there is a more detailed description of how to reach the RIBA, enter and move around the building. If you have any questions or need to know more, please contact Wilson Yau, RIBA, by email at [email protected] or telephone (+44) 0207 307 3711 (line open 10am to 5pm, Monday to Friday). For any general enquiries, please contact the RIBA via telephone on (+44) 020 7580 5533 or email [email protected] .

Building opening hours The building is open to the public between Monday and Saturday during these hours: Monday to Friday 8am to 5.30pm (Tuesday open until 8pm) and Saturday 10am to 5pm. It is closed on Sundays.

Address Our full address is RIBA, 66 Portland Place, , United Kingdom, W1B 1AD. A map of the RIBA can be found on Google Maps.

Image: the exterior of the RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London Credit: RIBA

The area and building location The RIBA’s building at 66 Portland Place (A4021), on the corner with , in the area of central London. Portland Place is located between Oxford Street and Euston Road. Portland Place is a busy road with several pedestrian crossing points, but not all the streets intersecting it have pedestrian crossings. The pavements are wide and usually not crowded except during the start and end of the school day.

Transport The building is close to several London Underground stations: 700 metres north of Oxford Circus station, 450 metres south of Regent’s Park station and 450 metres south of Great Portland Street station. These are all in TFL Zone 1. There are several bus stops nearby. The closest is stop K for bus numbers 88 and 453 heading to Dartmouth Park and Marylebone respectively and this stop is on Portland Place, on the other side of the road to the RIBA. Routes 88 and 453 in the other direction serve bus stop E on Great Portland Street when going south to Clapham Common and Deptford Park respectively. Other nearby bus routes stop near Oxford Circus, Regents Park and Great Portland Street underground stations. Portland Place is within the northern boundary of London’s Congestion Charging Zone. The road has limited public parking and single yellow line restrictions apply outside 66 Portland Place. There are designated disabled parking spaces for Blue Badge holders on Portland Place. More information about transport in London is available from Transport for London.

Entering the building The main entrance is located on the eastern side of Portland Place. From the street there are three wide white stone steps which lead to revolving metal framed glass doors. The distance from the top of the steps to the doors is two metres. Two ramps run on either side of the steps and each ramp lead to a different metal framed glass door flanking the revolving ones; the door on the right is power assisted and operated by pressing a panel button outside on the right-hand side on the inner wall of the entrance. The building is multi-use, so at any one time there are many different people using the building. It houses exhibition spaces, offices, meeting rooms, a bookshop, library and café. How busy it is can vary depending on the time of day, season and the temporary events taking place. If requested, we can provide information on other activities when we get closer to the date of the workshop.

Inside and the ground floor Once you are in the building you immediately enter the reception area, there is the manned reception desk on the left as you enter, sofas for all visitors to use are on the right. It is a public area and has an even stone floor with large rugs immediately covering the area next to the doors. The building is open to the public and there is no need to sign in or report to reception. Walking forward, passing reception and the sofas, facing you directly is the grand staircase. Before the staircase, on either side are short corridors. The left corridor leads to the lifts and the Architecture Gallery where the Beyond Bauhaus exhibition is located – the lifts are located at the end of that corridor, whilst the Architecture Gallery is on the right. The right corridor leads to the bookshop and café. All are open to the public and step free. The doors to the bookshop and café are left open during opening hours. The Architecture Gallery has large double doors that are manually operated, which can be heavy but are usually manned during opening hours by a gallery assistant.

Moving around the building: the lifts There are two lifts side by side, which call at all floors. The control panels outside the lifts have braille on the buttons, the buttons inside each lift car have no braille but the numbers are raised. These lifts are small, the dimensions of each lift are: • Door width is 730mm • Car depth is 900mm • Car width is 1100mm The lifts do not have speakers and will not call out the number of the floor it stops at, but staff can be made available to accompany anyone who needs assistance.

Moving around the building: the stairs All floors are connected by stairs and all steps are hard surface. Floors are either stone or wood. All handrails are metallic and run along all the stairs, but they will not always be on both sides and are not continuous between the basement and second floor. The stairs from the first to sixth floor are narrower than the grand staircase, being approximately 1.5 metres wide, whilst the grand staircase from the ground to first floors starts off at three metres wide before narrowing. The staircase from the basement to the first floors are separate to the staircase connecting the first to the sixth floors, but accessible to each other via the first-floor landing across a distance of seven metres. There are up to two small landings between each floor, each pair of landings is separated by two to five steps.

Table listing number of steps between each floor Floors Number of steps between floors Basement to ground 24 Ground to first 28 First to second 37 Second to third 21 Third to fourth 18 Fourth to fifth 24 Fifth to sixth 29

Moving around the building: the stairs from ground to first floors From the ground floor there are 28 hard- surface steps up to the first floor where the other exhibition space, the First Floor Gallery showing the László Moholy-Nagy in Britain exhibition, is located. The grand staircase between these levels divides into two at the landing after 11 steps, each of these two stairs turn 90 degrees and run two steps – one flight turns left, the other to the right. The two stairs then turn another 90 degrees and run for 15 steps. Both stairs then end to face the double doors to the First Floor Gallery. Handrails are continuous from the ground to first floor, running both sides until it turns at the landings. Before 10am and after 5pm, the doors will be closed to the First Floor Gallery. There are seats for the public to sit on near the piano and large windows on the first floor

Moving around the building: the stairs from ground floor to basement From the ground floor the basement can be reached via two set of stairs, each two metres wide, that go downwards either side of the grand staircase. The two stairs the turn 180 degrees inwards at a landing after 15 steps, whereupon they join to a single staircase with nine steps. At the bottom are two double doors that are operated manually.

Facilities Toilets are located throughout the building. Toilets for disabled people, men and women are in the basement, accessible unisex toilets can be found on the 6th floor. When approaching via the stairs, the disabled and men’s toilets in the basement are on the left and the women’s toilet on the right. If accessing this level via the lifts, the toilets are on the right-hand side in this order: women’s, men’s and disabled. Toilet doors are manually operated. The cloakroom is normally closed, but staff on the day can take heavy items to a secure space for storage for the duration of the workshop.