![]() ![]() ![]() In 1997, the leading sponsor of the renovation of the Washington Monument, the Target Corporation, approached Graves seeking a designer to create an inventive and visually attractive scaffold system for the project. Graves’ affiliations with Alessi and Disney were but a prelude to his most ambitious and wide-reaching collaboration, one which would change the face of mass-merchandising retail in America. By the early 1990s, the growth of Graves’ design enterprise necessitated the establishment of a separate department of design within his architectural firm, which would ultimately develop into a firm in its own right, Michael Graves Design Group. In these hotels, the extent of Graves’ aesthetic reached beyond the buildings into the furnishings, fabrics, wallpapers, and even the dishware. While his work with Alessi was a crucial step in the development of his design practice, it was his through his commission for the two hotels at Walt Disney World in the late 1980s that Graves saw the potential for a total thematic vision come to fruition. This partnership yielded what would become Graves’ most iconic design as well as Alessi’s most popular product, the whistling bird teakettle, with over two million sold since its debut in 1985. Graves’ reputation as a designer of stylish household products geared toward a more modest budget can be traced back to his work with the Italian firm Alessi that began in the 1980s. Reflecting the philosophies of such venerable early twentieth-century exemplars as the Austrian Wiener Werkstätte, a visual arts collective who maintained the value of craftsmanship in the face of emerging industry, and the German design school the Bauhaus, whose aesthetic vision embraced both beauty and utility, Graves recognizes that modern industrial manufacturing processes did not signal the end of elegant, stylish design, but rather created a new potential for bringing a more sophisticated, relevant design aesthetic to the middle class. While Graves has designed a number of extraordinary homes during his more than fifty years in the architectural field, his impact inside the home has been similarly influential, as he boasts some of the most recognizable domestic product designs of the past thirty years. Rounding this out with a thirty-nine year career as a full-time tenured professor at Princeton, it can be said that Graves’ full impact on architecture and design at the turn of the century is virtually immeasurable. The 2001 Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects (the highest award that it bestows upon individual architects) and the 1999 National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton top the list of over 200 regional, national, and international awards bestowed upon Graves and his two firms, Michael Graves & Associates and Michael Graves Design Group. The number of awards, accolades, and honorary doctorates Graves has received over the course of his lengthy and consistently productive career is truly staggering. His Portland Building has been considered one of the most groundbreaking and controversial examples of the postmodern architectural aesthetic since its completion in 1982, and his iconic Humana Building in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and the Walt Disney World Dolphin and Swan Hotels are listed among the American Institute of Architects’ 150 top buildings in the United States. One of the vaunted New York Five group of modernist architects based in New York City in the late 1960s, Graves later rejected the stringent efficiency and severity of modernism for the witty eclecticism and formal freedom of postmodernism, an architectural style he was amongst the first to introduce into the American landscape. For educational purposes, the exhibition also includes video elements that provide additional context for Michael Graves’ work and career, and an education center featuring books and other materials that provide supplementary historical background.īy the time a chess set designed by Michael Graves first appeared on the shelves of Target stores in 2000, its creator’s name was already synonymous with innovation in architecture and design in the twentieth century. The exhibition provides further contextual foundation for Graves’ historical significance through additional examples of product design. While the exhibition features such games as Scrabble, Monopoly, Poker, and Stratego, the central element is the chess set, which is complemented by materials used in the design and creation of the set loaned by the Michael Graves Design Group. Part of the line of housewares, decorative accessories, and furnishings created for the Target Corporation (now sold exclusively by JCPenney), these games bear the inimitable Graves stamp in their sleek and sophisticated design. Strategy by Design: Games by Michael Graves focuses on the games designed by the Michael Graves Design Group. ![]()
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