Michael Graves

Architect; Product/Industrial Designer / United States / Michael Graves & Associates

www.michaelgraves.com

(1934–2015) American architect Michael Graves has been in the forefront of architectural design since he founded his practice in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1964. As Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus, at Princeton University, where he taught for almost 40 years, Graves is an influential theorist as well as a diversified and prolific designer. Since the early 1980s, his work directly influenced the transformation of urban architecture from the abstraction of commercial modernism toward an interest in context. Hailed in the New York Times by critic Paul Goldberger as “truly the most original voice American architecture has produced in some time,” Graves has been the recipient of several of the most prestigious awards ever conferred upon architects in the United States. These include the 2001 Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, the 1999 National Medal of Arts (a Presidential Award), and the $50,000 Frank Annunzio Award from the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation.

Graves has dubbed himself “a general practitioner,” designing not only the interiors for the majority of his projects, but also a wide range of furnishings and artifacts, from furniture and lighting fixtures to jewelry and dinnerware, for companies such as Alessi, Steuben, Disney, Phillips Electronics, and Black and Decker. He has teamed with Target Stores to bring his signature style of design to a larger public in a wide variety of product categories. For the German partnership of Duravit, Dornbracht and Hoesch, he has created “Dreamscape,” a bath fixtures and fittings collection, and for the Italian hardware manufacturer Valli and Valli, a series of door handles in various metals.

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