Michael Graves

Michael Graves (born 1934) was a leading American architect and designer, instrumental in the emergence of Post-Modernism in the mid-1970s. His classicizing and colorful buildings are intended to make contemporary architecture more meaningful and accessible, referring to past tradition while also responding to contemporary surroundings.

Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on July 9, 1934, Michael Graves studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati (B. Arch., 1958), at Harvard University (M. Arch., 1959), and, as winner of the Prix de Rome, at the American Academy in Rome (1960-1962). Beginning in 1962, he taught architecture at Princeton University and also maintained a private practice. From here his importance as both teacher and practicing architect steadily increased.

Early in his career Graves was identified as a member of the New York Five, a group of young architects whose largely residential designs were reminiscent of the Swiss architect Le Corbusier in their geometric abstraction. A 1972 book on this group first brought Graves exposure and drew attention to the distinctive characteristics of his work. In his Hanselmann House (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1967) a complexity of form and yet a transitory quality were created by his layering of exterior spaces. These qualities became more pronounced in his Benacerraf House addition (Princeton, New Jersey, 1969) and in his Snyderman House (Fort Wayne, 1972), as did his organization of interiors into distinct rooms, an approach at odds with the Modern movement's traditional emphasis on openness of plan.

Graves also showed an interest in metaphor which would eventually separate him further from established Modernism. This metaphor was expressed variously in the classical sense of processional entry at the Hanselmann House or the color coding of the Benacerraf addition, suggesting analogies with the natural environment. While still abstract, Graves' Snyderman House has surfaces that are eroded by porches, balconies, and open framing, liberally splashed with soft, bright colors that break emphatically with the whiteness of Modernism. The color, collage-like murals, and almost Cubist spatial effects of his early projects reveal Graves' activity as a painter, as well as an architect.

Modifying the Modern Tradition

By the mid-1970s Michael Graves was moving vigorously away from the Modern tradition and toward an architecture he characterized as "figurative"—that is, related in visual and symbolic ways to human beings. Graves' architecture increasingly used anthropomorphic metaphors, such as the classical three-part division of a wall to suggest the feet, body, and head of a human figure. He distinguished between traditional elements such as wall and window, rejecting the Modern movement's blending of these into "window-wall." Graves began to mix pragmatic aspects of building with a more poetic sensitivity, seeking to re-humanize architecture so users could identify with and relate to it both physically and symbolically. In all of these ways, Graves was part of the emergence of a new style dubbed Post-Modernism.

Although variously defined, Post-Modern architecture is, at its most basic, architecture that is rooted in the Modern movement, yet reacts against basic tenets established by such masters as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Graves' Post-Modernism is decidedly classicizing. His architecture utilizes forms and concepts that derive from the classical architectural tradition. To his love of the classical, however, Graves added his training in Modernist structure and his awareness of American traditions, developing a personal form of Post-Modern classicism.

More three-dimensional and expressive, Graves' architecture of the mid-1970s included more direct symbolic references, alluding to tradition to re-establish meaning. His design for the Fargo-Moorhead Cultural Center Bridge (North Dakota-Minnesota, 1977) was denser, more massive than his earlier buildings, less brightly colored, and more clearly related to particular sources, like the work of French architect Claude Ledoux. Graves' motifs (columns, pediments, arches, keystones) were fragmented, suggesting a classical past but never recalling any particular monument directly, as in the Plocek House (Warren, New Jersey, 1977).

Post-Modernism Becomes Controversial

Michael Graves' works after 1980 brought him international recognition as a leading figure in Post-Modernism, but not without engendering controversy. With other Post-Modernists, he was accused of extremism for radically departing from Modernism's pragmatic expression of function and materials. Graves, however, found Modernism alienating and created architecture intended to communicate with its surroundings and with the public by referring to architectural tradition. Especially important to him was ornament, rejected by Modernism but seen by Post-Modernists as essential to giving a building meaning. Despite this serious concern with meaning, Graves' Post-Modern buildings are colorful, paradoxical, even witty hybrids of references. A good example of all these qualities is his Portland (Oregon) Public Services Building (1980), the first substantial public project to use the Post-Modern style.

The Portland Building also represents well the controversy surrounding Post-Modernism. Graves' competition-winning project was attacked by local architects of the Modernist camp. The uproar forced a second competition, but Graves' design won again, both for its style and its cost-effectiveness. Differentiated by form, color, and material into three sections, his building suggests a classical organization of base, body, and crown. Graves' design was also highly contextual in complementing in style and scale the adjacent older city buildings and public park. Yet it is distinctive and celebratory; accented with stylized columns and a huge keystone, billowing garlands, and an allegorical statue, the building seeks to symbolize and inspire the city through multiple figurative references.

Other buildings of the 1980s show that Michael Graves took on diverse large and small public and private projects from the Spanish mission style San Juan Capistrano (California) Public Library (1980) to the environmentally sympathetic Liberty State Park Environmental Education Center (Jersey City, New Jersey, 1980). In his 27-story Humana Medical Corporation Headquarters (Louisville, Kentucky, 1982), Graves' fragmented, metaphorical references continued, as did his use of color to enliven surfaces, distinguish components, and relate building, nature, and people. Asserting its own personality, Graves' design was also contextual, healing the breach between small-scale downtown buildings and a tall glass-box skyscraper adjacent. Graves' first major building in New York City was the expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His proposed design continued his vocabulary of distantly classical forms, blocky proportions, and varied colors and stirred up controversy.

Resistance to Specialization

Beginning in the late 1970s, but particularly by the mid-1980s, Graves expanded his range of influence to the design of furniture (initiated when he was hired by Sunar Hauserman furniture to design a furniture showroom), rugs, kitchen products, dinnerware, jewelry, clocks, and watches. Quoted in the The Indianapolis Star in 1994, Graves said, "It's only in recent times that we've drawn the lines, that (we think) an architect only designs buildings."

Graves' most famous small-scale creation was the chirping birdie teakettle produced by Alessi in 1985. He followed that with two different tea kettle designs for Moller International, one that featured the cartoon character, Mickey Mouse. It and a gourmet collection of housewares illustrated the many ties that developed between Graves and The Walt Disney Company. Graves also designed the company's corporate headquarters in Burbank, California, its Swan and Dolphin hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, Euro Disney's Hotel New York in Marne-La-Vallee, France, and a post office for Disney's planned Community of Celebration, Florida.

A multifaceted and innovative artist and architect, Graves won numerous prizes and awards from such organizations as the American Institute of Architects and such professional journals as Progressive Architecture and Interiors. He also exhibited his drawings and designs nationwide.

Further Reading

A discussion of Graves' early work in relation to that of some of his contemporaries may be found in Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier (1972 and 1975). The monograph Michael Graves, edited by David Dunster (1979), surveys Graves' work to that date and incorporates interpretive essays by Alan Colquhoun and Peter Carl. One overview of Graves' work is his own Michael Graves, Buildings and Projects 1966-1981 (1982), which begins with Graves' essay "A Case for Figurative Architecture," presents his work chronologically with numerous drawings and photographs, and includes an interpretive essay by Vincent Scully, "Michael Graves' Allusive Architecture." Two subsequent editions covering Graves' work from 1982-1989 and 1990-1994 have been published. Graves' relationship with Post-Modernism in general is considered in Charles Jencks' Post-Modern Classicism (1980) and The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (4th edition, 1984). □

GRAVES, MICHAEL 1934-

architect

The Best of a New Generation

Michael Graves was one of the most influential architects of the last thirty years in the United States. As an educator at Princeton University, Graves influenced his students with his philosophy of architecture as a "symbolic language" that expressed not merely the need for shelter but "society's pattern of rituals." Coming of age during the heyday of modern architecture, Graves rejected the machinelike structure of the 1950s for more humanly scaled, environmentally aware, and socially conscious buildings. Like those of other postmodern architects of the 1970s, Graves's designs blend classical and modern forms in new ways.

Life

Michael Graves was born on 9 July 1934 in Indianapolis, Indiana. During childhood Graves enjoyed drawing and painting, which he claimed he turned to as a way to avoid playing the violin. His parents, who were farmers, discouraged Graves from a career in fine arts and steered him toward architecture or engineering. Graves took their advice, and in 1958 he earned his B.A. degree in architecture at the University of Cincinnati.

In Rome

In 1959 Graves completed his master's degree at Harvard University, and in 1960 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome prize. A fellowship allowed Graves to study in Rome for two years where he became fascinated by the paintings and buildings of the Renaissance and post-Renaissance periods. While in Rome Graves underwent an intellectual and artistic transformation. For him architecture was no longer simply an art form, concerned with structure and weight; instead architecture was the "human endeavor" expressed in concrete and plaster.

The Art of Architecture

When Graves returned from Rome in 1962, he took a lecture post at Princeton University. Graves gained national notoriety when he and architect Peter Eisenman designed a city extending from New York to Philadelphia. Their New Jersey Corridor Study was shown at the Forty under Forty exhibit at the Architectural League of New York in 1966. Five of the young architects were singled out by The New York Times critic Paul Goldberg for special praise and were christened the "New York Five."

Works

While much of Graves's influence came from his drawings, writings, and teaching, he nonetheless built many notable buildings and houses. His most famous building is the Portland Building (1982) in Portland, Oregon. This $22.4 million, fifteen-story structure was innovative in its design while still being energy efficient and low in cost. Graves's design stirred up heated debate in the architectural world: Philip Johnson praised it, but the dean of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology criticized it for being an "oversize, berib-boned Christmas package." In 1983 the Portland Building won a National Honor Award for Graves.

Graves, Michael (1934– ). One of the most controversial US architects. He was identified as one of the New York Five, and first came to prominence with a series of private houses in which themes of Le Corbusier were reworked (e.g. Benacerraf House addition, Princeton, NJ (1969), where reminiscences of De Stijl also occur). From the 1970s his work became classified as Post-Modernist, as his architecture assimilated historical images and quotations. The Public Services Building, Portland, OR. (1980–3), and the Humana Tower, Louisville, KY. (1982–6), are celebrated examples of his work. Other buildings by him include the Environmental Education Center, Liberty State Park, Jersey City, NJ (1981–3), the Graves Residence, Princeton, NJ (1986–93), the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI (1990), the Team Disney Building, Burbank, CA (1985–91—with Snow White dwarfs standing in for atlantes in the Attic storey), the Mega Corporation, Sony Building, Tokyo (1991), and the Federal Court House, Trenton, NJ (1992).

Bibliography

Buck & Vogt (eds.) (1994);
Frampton et al. (1975);
Graves ,(1999);
Kudalis ,(1996);
K. Nichols et al. (eds.), (1990, 1995);
van Vynckt (ed.) (1993);
Wheeler et al. , (1982)

Michael Graves 1934–, American architect, b. Indianapolis, Ind., educated at the Univ. of Cincinnati and Harvard. Graves was a member of the New York "Five" or "white" modernist architects during the 1960s, the other four being Richard Meier , Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, and John Hejduk. In the 1970s, Graves emerged as a leading proponent of the American postmodernist style. His completed projects include the Portland Building in Portland, Oreg.; the Swan and Dolphin Hotels in Walt Disney World, Fla.; the Walt Disney Company Corporate Headquarters in Burbank, Calif.; the Newark Museum in Newark, N.J.; the Emory Univ. Museum of Art and Architecture in Atlanta, Ga.; the expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City; and the Central Library in Denver. Graves is also known for his design of furniture, furnishings, and artifacts.

Bibliography: See M. Graves; Buildings and Projects 1966–81 (1983) and Buildings and Projects 1982–89 (1990).