Mobility Week was a good opportunity to look at the different ways our colleagues and tenants get to work and move around the city. Here is a look back at what we organised.

Our offices are in our Central building, in the centre of Brussels, which has a large bike parking facility. Brussels is famous for Manneken Pis. It is also famous for its traffic jams.

Our colleagues can now lease a bike through o2o Bicycle Leasing and swap daily traffic for a ride to work. At a test event in our Quatuor building, they tried out a range of bikes to find the one best suited to their commute, and had their questions answered on the spot.

We also held a bike repair session with DrVelo in four of our Brussels buildings: Arts56, Triomphe, Quatuor and Central. This is the fifth year we have organised it.

Sticking with active mobility, we took our colleagues on a walk through the city centre: under 3 km, or less than 45 minutes on foot. Along the way, we passed five of our buildings: Central, Brederode, Montesquieu, Poelaert and Empereur, which is currently being redeveloped.

Finally, we took things a step further, because mobility is also about accessibility. We set up a simple exercise for our colleagues to experience first-hand some everyday obstacles that often go unnoticed:

• a step of just 1 or 4 cm
• a door with access control, or a set of double doors
• a pavement sloping uphill and tilting slightly towards the road
• a lift that is a tight fit
• a light switch or badge reader placed at 150 cm instead of 110 cm
• a fire extinguisher tucked into the corner next to a door
• glasses stored on a high shelf
• a planter in the corridor or on the pavement
• a toilet or washbasin that is too high or too low

Participants moved around using a wheelchair or with their eyes covered. In these conditions, getting from A to B quickly becomes an obstacle course, and that is mobility too. The exercise offers only a glimpse of what many people deal with every day, yet it made one thing clear: even in a building we know well, a single change in how we move or perceive our surroundings reshapes the whole route. Accessibility starts on the pavement outside and continues all the way to the desk: that is what makes a building work for everyone who uses it.