First Terry Pratchett and now I've lost another of my heros, Michael Graves.
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PRINCETON — Famed Princeton-based architect and designer Michael Graves died in Princeton Thursday at age 80.
From unique architecture to simple housewares found at Target, Graves' designs are internationally acclaimed. Michael Graves & Associates design firm, based in Princeton on Nassau Street, posted an announcement to its website Thursday saying Graves died peacefully of natural causes in his Princeton home.
At the end, there was little that separated art from architecture in Michael Graves' practice.
Graves, who died in his Princeton home Thursday, was one of the best-known architects in the U.S., famous for projects like the Humana building in Louisville, Kentucky, the Portland Municipal Building in Oregon, and his teakettle and other domestic utensils designed first for Target and then for J.C. Penney's.
Graves brought monumental sculpture back into architecture with projects like the Team Disney Building in Burbank, California, which features two-story-tall caryatids in the form of all seven dwarves from "Snow White," and he had a gift for stately, humanistic expression. The scaffolding he designed for the restoration of the Washington Monument on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in 2000 transformed the white obelisk into a glowing lantern that many city residents preferred to the bare stone needle.
The Team Disney Building consolidates Disney’s corporate offices following MGA’s 1985 master plan for the property. Featuring a 350,000 square foot office building with a 1000-car below-grade parking garage, the front façade is a Post-Modern interpretation of the Parthenon, with dwarfs, nearly 20 feet in height, holding up the pediment and facing a pedestrian plaza and reflecting pool.
May they both rest in peace.
AChat Forum
