Architect Michael Graves Faces Ultimate Design Challenge

Architect Michael Graves Faces Ultimate Design Challenge
There was a time, for architect Michael Graves, when designing buildings for people with disabilities was just another interesting design challenge. It meant complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act. It was about door thresholds, wheelchair passage width, grab bars.

It's still an interesting challenge for Graves, one of the country's best- known architects, the man generally credited with elevating the taste of the masses by designing hundreds of stylish household products for Target, from toasters to toilet brushes.

But now it's also personal.

Graves, who turned 70 in July, contracted a spinal infection in February 2003 as the result of a virus and is now paralyzed from the waist down. After almost a year in hospitals and rehabilitation centers, he remains bisected, he said, into a man for whom a "good body meets bad body." Ironically, the man who's been at the forefront of American architecture and design for more than 30 years can no longer access one of his own office buildings.

Yet despite disabling pain that can be "absolutely horrible," he continues to work, travel, design and preside over two thriving businesses and more than 100 employees: Michael Graves & Associates, an architectural and interior design practice; and Michael Graves Design Group, a product-design firm. The companies are busier