When I visit Graves again one steamy morning last summer, he is confined to his bed due to a prolonged bedsore, under strict medical orders to heal it by staying down and out of his wheelchair, so he insists that we speak in his room. A number of chairs are set up for his designers to join what will be a long meandering conversation about design, disability, and one of Graves’s favorite subjects: America’s obsession with originality for its own sake and transitory fashion over beauty. The man whose sparkling eyes greet me from the large hospital bed, I discover, is much younger than me. After all, in wheelchair years Graves is 27 my junior, and it shows.

The Re-Education of Michael Graves

Universal Design is based on the idea that products and environments should be designed in a way to make them usable by as many people as possible without adaption. It’s a very big (and important) idea. Visitability, on the other hand, is a very concrete and specific idea: houses should have a barrier-free entrance and an accessible bathroom.

There’s a wide variation in what people mean when they throw around terms like “barrier-free”, “wheelchair-accessible”, “universal design”, etc. I described on experience along that line in Wheelchair Friendly Homes Nearing Completion.

Fun and Leisure: Home Enabling Garden, from NCPAD
ACCESSIBLE GARDENING: Bring Mother Earth Within Reach, from MDA

I’m trying to find resources which avoid tokenism: rather than “here’s how to build a table-top garden”, or “horticulture as therapy”, I want access to the ENTIRE thing. Let me know what you’ve done.

Interesting what qualifies as “wheelchair accessible”. Notice that this home has what looks like 5-6 steps to the front entrance. Apparently the accessible entrance is hidden in the garage. This hiding of accessibility features stands in contrast to the renovation of Lake Park Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, where accessibility is “up-front and gracious”.

Back when we were looking for an architect to help us with our remodel, we interviewed a guy who said he had designed and built a wheelchair-accessible home just north of us. He gave me the owner’s name, I called him, asked him if I could see his wheelchair-accessible home. I was very explicit that this was the aspect of the house I was interested in. The owner was very friendly and invited me to come see his home.

In terms of accessibility features, it was very similar to the home featured above. All entrances (front, back, garage) were at least four steps above ground level, and the owner was very gracious about hauling me up them, although he was clearly surprised that there was an actual wheelchair in the equation.

The house was very open, hallways and doorways were wide. But it was certainly not wheelchair-ready. The bathrooms would have required substantial renovation, although all the walls were pre-blocked for later grab bar installation. The second floor was inaccessible; the owners pointed out where an elevator could be installed should the need arise. As it was, the stairway took at least four turns, so it would have been quite expensive to retro-fit it with a stairlift.

Still, in a country where most homes aren’t even visitable, it’s a step forward.

Prospect here in Longmont is an example of New Urbanism. While I applaud breaking out of the cookie cutter developer mold, and rethinking the relationship of the house with its environs, and I’m all for the funky use of color and materials, I was unable to put my finger on what disturbed me about the town. The article mentions the prevelance of above grade entrances and narrow hallways and doorways; other characteristics of Prospect include very narrow sidewalks and detached garages or carports with no accessible route to house or street.

I’ve given in on wall colors and doors. Light fixtures can’t be far behind. A couple of years ago I bought the end of a bolt of this incredible fabric that I just adore at Hobby Lobby for, like $1/yard. It’s a gauzy off-white with various brown yarns woven through it. I mentioned to my husband that I was really looking forward to making our new bedroom curtains out of it, and he made his “that stuff would be better off fed to the pigs” face. Maybe I should just give it away now and save myself the trouble.

Oh well. I’ve got two new websites to design, that ought to take my mind off it.

white.

Excuse me while I go cry in my beer and re-visualize.

Maybe once we add the many, many 7 foot bookcases, the large round cherry coffee table, the piano, the two black barrel chairs, the long red sofa and the giant African blanket hanging on the wall it won’t be so bad.

Rats.