Nordea House Awarded the Most Humane Building in Riga

On 10 February the Association of People with Disabilities and their Friends "Apeirons" awarded "the Golden Crutch 2009" to the most humane buildings or buildings enabling unrestricted access to everyone - also people with disabilities. The headquarters of Nordea – the Nordea House designed by the architectural bureau Sarma & Norde on K.Valdemara 62 was awarded the most accessible building to people with disabilities.

Member of the Management Board of Nordea Anatolijs Peškovs: „The Nordea House is the result of team work. The building was designed in cooperation with the project development company „Alojas Biznesa centrs” and the architectural bureau „Sarma & Norde” to make it accessible to everyone. It is of importance that the building provides easy access to our customers, visitors and also our employees and therefore the office premises of the bank were equipped in a manner enabling people with disabilities to enter any premise of the building without the assistance of other people. It is important to adjust the work environment to the needs of all persons concerned”.

The President of the Association of People with Disabilities and their Friends Ivars Balodis: „When organizing this award each year, we hope that this will be the last year, because it will be so hard to choose the winners. However, each year we come to realize that the issue on accessibility of the surrounding environment to people with disabilities is still topical. Therefore we want to mark out those who contribute towards integration of handicapped in the society. During evaluation of the Nordea House we concluded that in this building people with disabilities do not feel different, because they can freely access any part of the building. We hope that the number of such projects will grow with each year and the evaluation will become more difficult because all buildings will be equally accessible.”

The architect of the architectural bureau „Sarma & Norde” Visvaldis Sarma: „It is necessary to switch over the mode of thinking  - wide doors, building access ramps, accessible elevator buttons etc. is a comfort for everyone anytime. In this respect architects should not regard people with disabilities as something particular, but as people having a natural desire to feel comfortable in any building.”