Michael Graves Design Launches Gorgeous Accessible, ADA-Compliant Furniture For Pottery Barn

“At the end of the day, it’s really about safety and style,” noted Donald Strum, President of Michael Graves Design, of the firm’s new accessible home collection for Pottery Barn. The truly groundbreaking offering – 27 pieces that are ADA-compliant accessible updates to three of Pottery Barn’s best selling collections, plus several new designs – launches today after almost two years in development.

This is not either company’s first proverbial rodeo in the category. Two years ago, Pottery Barn quietly launched an accessible home collection. Over 200 items – in categories ranging from furniture to bath, home office and even lighting — are still featured on their site. According to the CDC, one in four adults in the United States lives with some type of disability. Those familiar with Michael Graves will immediately understand why Pottery Barn chose his eponymous design firm as a collaborative partner.

For those not familiar, a brief primer:

Michael Graves was an award-winning architect who originally rose to fame as a post-modernist and one of the “New York Five.” The Indiana native was incredibly prolific — he designed over 350 buildings around the world and created thousands of products for companies including Alessi, Steuben and Dansk. But he’s perhaps best known for his designs for Target. One early collection was a tad controversial as it bore an uncanny resemblance to his much higher-priced pieces for Alessi (most notably his iconic tea kettle, which was Strum’s first project for Graves). But Graves always wanted his designs to be accessible to a wider audience. In a New York Times interview conducted by this writer in 2011, he noted: “We have behind us all this mass production, so why not take advantage and bring the price down for everybody?”

More to the point of the Pottery Barn collection is that Graves, who died nine years ago at the age of 80, spent the last 12 years of his life in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down as the result of a spinal cord infection. “At some point he asked us all to get in a wheelchair and stay in it for a week, to see it from his point of view,” recalled Strum, who was the first industrial designer hired by Graves, forty years ago. “That’s when I realized how crushing it is.” When asked (in the aforementioned New York Times interview) if there was anything positive about being in a wheelchair, Graves responded, “I realize how bad the healthcare situation is for people, and being a designer I can do what I can do relative to that industry to make it better.” At the time, he was referring to products used within hospital environments (he had just designed “patient room furniture” for Stryker medical).

Strum noted that as a result of that and other projects that predate it, the firm has “hundreds of hours of ethnographic research with older adults and people with disabilities, inside their homes as well as families and professional care givers.” When Pottery Barn came calling, “we were able to hit the ground running, because we had started venturing out from our other, mostly bathroom, designs into other areas of the home. We had sketches and big thoughts about it.”

The resulting pieces, all created for the bedroom, don’t look especially different from a typical bed, nightstand, dresser or armchair. But a closer look reveals details that make all the difference for a person living with a disability, their families and caregivers. “Our mission is to create moments of joy with these products, that are visually appealing, full of character and purpose, that will enhance people’s lives,” said Strum.

In a cruel twist of fate, Strum was battling a rare form of bladder cancer during this process, and found himself using a wheelchair, walker, and other medical equipment products that the firm had designed. He “kept working through it, just like Michael did,” and is now, thankfully, cancer free. He also noted, somewhat sentimentally, that his late boss would be “so on board” with the collection as Graves “had to modify his own home in order to accommodate his wheelchair, but you’d never know it.” Which begs the question: is there more to come? “Let’s just say my fingers are crossed,” he mused. “We’d like to take on every room in the house.”

Scroll to see a selection of available designs, with notable features:

Beds feature integrated armrests to help sitting, standing, and a Pull & Roll side grip to help one reposition while in bed, or roll over on their side, thereby taking strain off the back when sitting up. There’s also integrated storage and a footrest “perch.”

Nightstands were designed with a higher height (26.5”), making them level with the bed armrest and keeping necessary items within reach. Raised edges prevent said items from rolling off, an integrated power strip eliminates bending to reach outlets, and hardware (in an easy-to-see contrast finish) adheres to ADA guidelines. A major feature of the nightstands is the CPAP storage and pass-through, which allows users to keep their machine hidden while passing the hose through the side for use at night.

Similar to the nightstand, dressers boast front, side and back grab channels for containment of small items to eliminate accidental dropping and bending. They also serve to facilitate “furniture surfing” by providing a safe grip for balance or assistance standing. 9” ground clearance allows wheelchair users to have better clearance for feet and provides space for bin storage. Hardware adheres to ADA guidelines and allows for one-handed opening of all drawers.

There’s a small “side bench” or stool, with integrated storage, meant to sit next to the dresser and provide a place to sit while getting dressed.

The collection includes two upholstered armchairs: the Yardley Slope and the Bradford. The designs optimize foam density, seat height, seat depth, armrest height and extension touch points to encourage the “nose over toes” position in the chair and enabling a more supported position to get in and out of the chair.

The Bradford Chair also features adjustable/attachable foot options to choose the height that is right for the user and a rear grab rail to provide a safe grip for balance and help facilitate “furniture surfing.”

Available through Pottery Barn.