Architect and designer Michael Graves has died at his home in Princeton, New Jersey at the age of 80, his office has announced.
“It is with deep sadness that Michael Graves Architecture & Design (MG&AD) announces the firm’s founding principal, Michael Graves, passed away right now, out of the blue and peaceful, of normal causes,” the company announced on its site.
9093 Kettle by Michael Graves for Alessi, 1985
Born in 1934 in Indianapolis, Graves set up his architectural practice in Princeton in 1964. He is ideal recognized for performs of each architecture and layout in the Postmodern type, notably the Portland Public Solutions Creating in Portland, Oregon, and a range of implements for Italian kitchenware brand Alessi.
“Profoundly sad news right now: Michael Graves is dead at 80,” explained architecture critic Paul Goldberger on Twitter. “An extraordinary, broad-ranging, uneven and brilliant occupation.”
Portland Public Companies Developing by Michael Graves & Associates, 1982
The Portland building, deemed a seminal Postmodern work, is a monolithic cube with richly decorated facades featuring colourful, oversized geometric abstractions of classical columns. The creating has recently been threatened with demolition.
Connected story: Postmodern Portland Developing will be saved, says architect Michael Graves
Graves was a member of the so-known as New York 5, a group of 5 prominent, Modernism-inspired architects operating in the city in the late 1960s that also integrated Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier.
Sketch by Michael Graves for the 9093 kettle
In the 1980s Graves became a member of Memphis, the influential Postmodern design and style movement based in Milan and founded by Ettore Sottsass. In the course of this time period he designed merchandise for Alessi, which includes the iconic 9093 stove-prime kettle. The conical stainless-steel item, which featured a whistling bird on its spout, grew to become the brand’s very best-marketing solution that decade.
“This merchandise was, for some thing like 15 many years, a number-one particular seller,” Alessi proprietor Alberto Alessi advised Dezeen last yr. “It still is a single of the top ten.”
