The name Michael Graves stands for both pioneering architecture and sophisticated product design. As a product designer, the multi-talented Graves designed tableware, lights, rugs, jewellery and numerous clocks. His office, Graves' Studio, received well over a hundred design awards for his designs, which were often ironic.
Michael Graves was born in 1934 in Indianapolis in the USA. He completed his architecture studies at Harvard University in 1959. Just a few years later, he was himself appointed to the faculty of Princeton University. After working with Richard Meier and George Nelson in New York, USA, Michael Graves opened his own architecture practice in Princeton, USA, only a few years after graduating.
Numerous exhibitions followed in the 1960s, such as "40 under 40" in New York and the "Architecture of Museums" exhibition at MoMA in New York.
Together with Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier, Michael Graves was also a member of the "New York Five" group, whose designs were seen as a critique of 1960s architecture because they drew on the rational modernism of the 1920s and 1930s. In this respect, Graves underwent a transformation when, in the 1970s, he moved away from this modernism to become a taboo-breaking postmodernist with historicist references.
His buildings, such as the Portland Building (1980 – Portland, Oregon, USA), the Humana Building (1985 – Louisville, Kentucky, USA), the Walt Disney World Dolphin Hotel (1989 – Orlando, Florida, USA) and the American Academy (1996 – Rome, Italy), have made architectural history.
But Michael Graves was not only an architect – he was also a designer, and to an extent that many people are unaware of, even though his products can be found in countless homes.
Unlike other figures of his time, Graves skilfully and successfully translated his talent for transferring classical forms into postmodern design into everyday objects. A prime example is the "Bird Kettle" designed for Alessi in 1985. The kettle with its colourful whistling bird has sold more than half a million times and helped establish Alessi as the design powerhouse par excellence. Further objects for Alessi followed, including an egg timer, espresso cups, a corkscrew and various kettles and jugs.
Michael Graves died in March 2015 at the age of 80 – an influential architect and a formative designer of the 20th century.
