Michael Graves
Michael Graves designed the Portland Building in Oregon, one of the most debated buildings of postmodernism. He brought classical forms and strong colours back into architecture and later designed thousands of everyday objects.
Michael Graves was born in 1934 in Indianapolis. He studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati and at Harvard and was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 1960–1962, where he drew ruins and buildings. In 1962 he began teaching at Princeton, where he stayed for almost forty years. In the 1970s he was one of the New York Five, who designed white houses in the spirit of Le Corbusier.
Graves broke with modernism at the end of the 1970s. The Portland Building in Oregon, opened in 1982, has a façade with huge pilasters, a giant keystone and colours in terracotta and blue, and the building became a symbol of postmodernism. He designed the Humana Building in Louisville and several buildings for Disney, among them the headquarters in Burbank, where the seven dwarfs carry the pediment. He also designed objects for Alessi, among them a kettle with a bird on the spout, and for the retail chain Target.
Graves was paralysed after an infection in 2003 and thereafter devoted himself to designing hospitals and aids for people with disabilities. He died in 2015. The Portland Building has been criticised for technical shortcomings and dark offices and has been renovated, but it is regarded as one of the most important works of postmodernism. Graves showed how the architect could also become a designer for the mass market.