
Michael Graves
(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.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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