A small local museum spent two years arguing about a door.
The side entrance, the one nearest the car park, sits 30 centimetres above the path. For anyone using a wheelchair, or pushing a pram, or carrying a heavy case, those 30 centimetres are a wall. The building's own front steps are protected, so the only place a ramp could go was the side.
The first design was rejected in a single afternoon. It reached the door in 240 centimetres of length, which sounded efficient and was, in fact, illegal. Thirty centimetres of rise spread over 240 centimetres gives a gradient of one in eight: for every eight centimetres forward, the surface climbs one. That is steeper than a person can safely push themselves up, and steeper than the building code allows.
The rule the architect was working to is simple to say and expensive to obey: no ramp may be steeper than one in twelve. Thirty centimetres of rise therefore needs 360 centimetres of length — three and a half metres of concrete instead of two and a half, and a turning platform at the bottom that the first design had no room for.
The finished ramp opened last spring. Two brass studs are set into it, one at the path and one at the door, and a small plaque between them gives their heights: 0 and 30. A visitor once asked the attendant what the studs were for.
«Two points,» he said. «Everything else about this ramp comes out of those two measurements.»