Michael Graves

Michael Graves (1934-2015) was an American architect and product designer, born in Indianapolis. He studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard, held the Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome from 1960, and taught at Princeton University from 1962 to 2001. He designed more than 350 buildings and about 2,000 consumer products.

In the early 1970s he was one of the New York Five, architects whose white, abstract houses were published in the book Five Architects. He then turned to postmodernism, using simplified classical elements, strong color and large applied ornament. The Portland Building in Portland, Oregon (1982), a city office block, has a facade of colored panels with oversized pilasters (flat columns attached to a wall) and keystones. The Humana Building in Louisville, Kentucky (1985), is a granite office tower. For Disney he designed the Team Disney Building in Burbank, California, where statues of the Seven Dwarfs hold up the pediment, and the Swan and Dolphin hotels at Walt Disney World in Florida.

His housewares include a stainless-steel kettle with a bird-shaped whistle for Alessi (1985) and more than 500 products sold at Target from 1999. A spinal cord infection left him paralyzed in 2003, after which he designed hospital rooms and furniture for patients. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1999 and the AIA Gold Medal in 2001.