From these modest beginnings in small house additions and mural paintings, Graves eventually became what many have called the most influential designer in America -- not only in architecture but also in drawing, painting, furniture and artifacts. Graves not only designs, however; he has also emerged as one of the most versatile theorists and critics of the contemporary architectural scene. In the mid-1970s, he rejected the broadly accepted and widely practiced philosophy of modernism in architecture. Graves's "post-modernism conversion" became exemplary of an entire new movement.
Is Graves a modern architect, a post-modern, a late modern, an eclectic, or a classicist? He would answer: I am just an architect. "I don't care what people call me," he says in response to the publicity; "labels have the negative value of making smaller boundaries for people" Ref.1. Graves makes analogies between architecture, poetry, and literature; speaks of the need for symbolic references in all those fields.
Architecture has to do with myth and ritual, Graves insists. "I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention." Or, as he puts the point, "I don't believe in morality in architecture" Ref.2. Architecture understood as invention or as "social myth" must communicate with a culture, not treat itself or its clients like machines.
Machines can do many things well, Graves intimates, but they cannot function in the world of the symbolic. And, in addition, machines are only expected to function well; they do not have to explain their function. Explanation is superfluous to a genuinely successful abstraction.
Graves decided to create buildings that would avoid such a degree of abstraction. "The dialogue of architecture has been centered too long around the idea of truth," he observes. "It has made the language of architecture thinner, and poorer." What truth in architecture requires most of all, Graves feels, is literacy. Until the public can read it-just like the languages of literature or music -- there can be no real communication. "I am trying to reinstate the language of architecture," he says, bring back its nouns and verbs Ref.3.
Rather than take its inspiration from the painterly, the technical, or the purely functional, post-modernism asks that we re-learn or re-activate the classical languages. "Figurative architecture" is architecture that speaks, makes itself accessible, and therefore permits us to participate in it without difficulty. But a price is paid for this accessibility. Some have argued that the logic of Graves's vocabulary is limited entirely to appearances. The distinction between structural and ornamental elements is often blurred; propped post-and-beam is structurally redundant, a "grammatical inconsistency." Such artifice is liable to misinterpretation. When audiences are taught to "read" appearances rather than construction, might not language itself be thrown into crisis?
Graves defends this "inconsistency," however, as part of figurative architecture. "In any architecture," he contends, "there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function." Alone, neither would suffice. "Like a good piece of music," Graves insists, architecture is "not all up front" Ref. 4. In other words, understanding involves creative work, the application of real imagination and metaphor, not just the deciphering of an embedded code.
When asked about his architectural style, Graves has answered: "If I have a style, I am not aware of it." His is indeed a rich mix of styles: Cubism, Art Deco, Constructivism, Renaissance, Mannerism, as well as ancient Egyptian. "I have no requirements for a style of architecture," Graves explains, "I have a requirement for myself in making designations of elements. I need to have full language and I do not want the language to be only space" Ref.5. However, he is determined to bring back into architecture the concept of the room, with all its "anthropomorphic and psychic needs" given full expression, not just as enclosed space. Modernism was too successful in "stripping down" art. What we have now long demanded from painting and literature -- a broad emotional spectrum with which individuals can identify -- we must begin to demand again from architecture.
The crucial thing about any language, verbal or spatial, remains the fact that people speak it. Re-appropriating a language of architecture thus means starting with the most basic needs: where is the door? What does the window look out on? What do I do in this room? But here a paradox presents itself. Graves has admitted that to the extent he has a style at all, he is "not working within the styles of the culture" Ref.6. What are the styles of American culture today? Perhaps they can be summed up in one value: "transitoriness." The sense that whatever you create will soon be outdated is what makes the culture modern. But buildings are not transitory things, they are statements in space that are built to endure. How can an architect make these buildings responsive, "readable," and yet not immediately dated in a culture where styles pass so quickly?
Graves wishes to find a language for a culture that is losing it. That is, he tries to resurrect elements of a language and give them fresh "currency." One can never start from scratch or from abstractions, since living languages never work that way. One must concentrate on what is already present, but inarticulate; one must remind a given community that it does have a language, even if it is in bits and pieces.
The central theme in Graves's architecture since the late 1970s has been the use of archetypal elements derived from the need for shelter and support (enclosure and structure). As with music and painting, the "modern" continues to be produced in many areas, but it is no longer mainstream. Any mainstream activity in architecture must make its primary task not to investigate pure form or relationship, but to restore literacy to "readers" and users of buildings.
There are three basic categories of building in Graves's oeuvre: first, additions to existing structures; second, buildings especially challenged by the local or vernacular context; and third, buildings designed to "humanize the corporate world."
The Benacerraf project was conceived not only as an addition to an existing house, but also as a free-standing pavilion in the garden, a sort of "cubist folly." It gives the feeling of being a stage set, a theatrical prop where Graves tried to blend the real and the representational. The color symbolism of the addition was intended to interact with the natural world and its laws, thus forming a "metaphorical landscape." In this early work, we see Graves at his most abstract (although more recently the colors have been subdued at the request of the client). Concerning this addition, Robert A. M. Stern has said: "It is so complex in its modernity that it deprives the original house of all meaning" Ref. 7. Graves, however, has vigorously contested this criticism, insisting on juxtaposition as a valid strategy for achieving formal compatibility.
The most important challenge for Graves seemed to be how to integrate this new bulk -- not only his new addition adjacent to Breuer's extremely powerful modernist building, but also how to integrate both of them into the larger neighborhood. Graves chose to expand more horizontally than vertically, around and above the Breuer building, embracing it. In this way, Graves established a visual balance to the whole one-block-long composition, keeping the front the same height as the existing building and then stepping back the remaining mass and bridging the old and the new with a symmetrical volume furthest back from Madison Avenue.
The "style" proposed by Graves for the Madison Avenue frontage is a very personal mixture of styles, evoking Egypt and Greece, Baroque and Renaissance England and France. As soon as Graves's first plan was revealed to the public, cries and controversy broke out. Architects in New York City were quick to circulate a petition denouncing the new design and asking for a recall. Graves himself remained stoic and tenacious vis-a-vis the critics, and ever more creative with his subsequent proposals. On several occasions he presented his design to the public, and took a great deal of hostile criticism very gracefully.
No one in the profession could remain unaware of the raging controversy, which became the cause celebre of the decade. One of America's most controversial architects, Philip Johnson, was probably correct when he said to his younger colleague and protege: "Michael, from now on they're going to introduce you at cocktail parties as 'the Whitney architect.' It almost doesn't matter whether you build the building or not" Ref.8. Johnson, however, turned out to be very positive about the project: "It's a beautiful building.... Michael's been very sensitive to his predecessor. He has paid decent a respect" Ref.9. On the other side of the controversy, Constance Breuer, widow of the architect, has said that she would rather see her husband's building demolished than integrated into the expanded Whitney as proposed by Graves.
Responding to this controversy, Graves has to date presented three designs. The first proposal (1985) was an artful integration of the Breuer building that gave the entire ensemble a feeling of architectural unity. Aware of the problems and public criticism facing approval of this first design, the trustees of the museum soon withdrew the proposed project, early in 1986.
In 1987, a revised design for the Whitney was unveiled, very similar to the first but reduced in size by 24% and forty-seven feet shorter than the original 1985 proposal. The revised project had a smaller library, a smaller auditorium, and less space to serve museum administrative offices and rentable office space. (The price tag remained the same: $37.5 million.) But even this scaled-down proposal was by no means guaranteed; it too had to face a long review process. The longest aesthetic battle over a building addition in U.S. history was continuing while Graves was being assured of an international reputation.
In December 1988, Graves presented a third proposal to the public. It contained approximately the same amount of space as the second proposal, but is aesthetically quite different from the earlier two attempts. Graves seems to have given up his strong imagery and potent symbolism. This time he proposed something simpler, far less personal and elaborate. The original Breuer building is no longer embraced, but remains intact; next to it Graves would add his own building, about the same size. This third and last attempt to date to scale down the Whitney addition demonstrates that in such a "battle of styles," there are no winners. Graves has managed to be more abstract, simpler, and more distant, but he does not attempt to imitate Breuer in any way. The third proposal clearly respects the modern master's presence and vocabulary -- regardless of how harsh this original building seemed to its own neighbors when built in 1966. In the end, what should be questioned or challenged is not Graves's ability to design, but the wisdom of those in the Whitney Board of Trustees who define the scope of such a large expansion at a critical urban location.
From the architect of small house additions in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Princeton's modest residential lots, hardly visible to passersby, Graves has emerged to world prominence on Madison Avenue, elbowing Breuer's recently designated "landmark building." Criticism of Graves's proposed addition continues, even as he has continually softened his unique vocabulary of "surrogate forms" and architectural motifs such as rotundas, arcades, and pavilions. Ironically, Graves became obliged to make impossible contextual gestures toward a building which in 1966 made no gesture to reflect its own immediate environment at all. The question of context leads us to a second category of Gravesian buildings, those whose setting and environment create special challenges for the architect. Here two examples will suffice, illustrating two quite different problems: the Environmental Education Center in Liberty State Park (Jersey City, N.J.), and the Public Library in San Juan Capistrano, California.
In Liberty State Park, more distant references were powerful -- the Statue of Liberty on her own island, and the southern tip of Manhattan Island -- but the immediate context was simply nonexistent. The building site was a large and empty lot, covered with wild brush and grass. At the time of its design (1980), the building was to stand alone in the wilderness. It was to serve as a "wildlife interpretive center" devoted to indoor environmental education through lectures, exhibitions and conferences. On the outside the building was to extend into the existing landscape through a path system interconnecting future pavilions. Graves sited the building in such a way as to respond to and to link these requirements for both internal and external "exhibits." The entry gate into the precinct serves as a sort of propylaeum between two pavilions. Within the courtyard, on the axis with the main door, a trellis is aligned leading toward the wildlife landscape and toward future pavilions yet to be built. While the landscaping and pavilions are only a "shadow context" at the present time, Graves has clearly conceived the ensemble, which can grow and expand over time while preserving its unity of place.
Here Graves framed the most majestic images of the New World: the Statue of Liberty and the southern tip of what began as New Amsterdam and is now one of the world's most vital and powerful downtown districts. Graves was obliged to create the context, a bridge between an immediate "unworked" natural environment and a visually distant cultural and historical presence.
While Liberty State Park had no immediate context to work with, the Public library at San Juan Capistrano had too much. The spirit of the prevailing "local vernacular architecture" in this small southern California town (located between Los Angeles and San Diego) is, if anything, "overcontextualized": local zoning ordinances often dictate a Spanish Mission style. In response to this powerful and mandated precedent, Graves organized his design around a courtyard that ties all the various activities together. The building shares a front door entry with a reconstructed stone church. The location of the building was carefully studied and placed not only to relate to its internal functions but to become part of a well-developed urban fabric. All the elements have been scaled down to the proper and relative size of this modest library, whose arrangement echoes an inward-looking Carthusian monastery in its plan.
The conspicuously "human scale" of the library follows the design guidelines developed for the town by the firm of the well known architect, Charles Moore. The consulting architects' guidelines, which later became official, suggested the proper (and improper) variations on the "California Coastal Mission Style." The city ran a competition for the library, and the forty-two submissions were reduced to three finalists. Among the finalists were two other well known firms, Robert A. M. Stern and then Moore, Ruble, Yudell -- the very firm that had developed the guidelines for interpreting the proper and improper use of vernacular elements. Michael Graves won the competition because of his virtuoso ability to interpret the guidelines in a creative and poetic way.
As built, the library was slightly modified and reduced in scale. But it remains a complex and picturesque ensemble, comprising 14,000 square feet distributed about sixty indoor spaces and organized by as many as twenty axes aiding the ritual of circulation and arrangement of large spaces without the frustration of feeling lost. Graves demonstrated how formal order, the classical tradition, and the mandated vernacular vocabulary of the Spanish mission could be brought together with various pre-Columbian and Mediterranean references to create an "anthropomorphic building" that makes its users feel both cultured and completely at home.
In 1980, Graves at last got the opportunity to challenge the glass box, the abstract and prevailing symbol of the speculative office building and the modern corporate world. The public has always had difficulty relating to these buildings. In 1979, Johnson had become the first major figure in American architecture to provide an alternative with his headquarters for AT&T on Madison Avenue in New York City -- in fact, his client reputedly had explicitly stated: "not another glass box."
One year later Graves took up a similar challenge. What he brought to the scene was a warmer, more whimsical, less pretentious and much less expensive solution. Like a classical column, Graves's building, too, had a base or feet, a middle or body, and an attic or "head" (as Graves likes to call these parts). But his budget was not as generous as AT&T's, and he had to beat competitive bids while at the same time bringing back the humanism of architecture, with its associative language.
The fifteen-story Portland Municipal Building was Graves's first major building after more than a decade of small-scale residential buildings or additions, and many beautifully drawn and unrealized projects that were widely exhibited, published and praised. In addition to the classical tripartite subdivision, Graves introduced ornament, statuary, and color into the plans for his municipal office building.
Graves's submission was both the most innovative and the least expensive: at the time of competition, 1981, under $52 per square foot. His building was also judged to be the most energy- efficient of the eleven final submissions. (It was also completed on schedule, and within its allocated budget of $22.4 million.)
As completed in October 1982, the building gives the impression of some huge temple of antiquity: oversize pilasters rise seven stories high, on top of which a four-story lintel is placed. On the roof there was to be a village-like cluster of small buildings, a refreshing release from so many flat-top modernist buildings. Since 1% of a building budget is usually devoted to the cost of art, Graves specified "as a 'nature reference,' huge ornamental garlands" (made of fiber glass) "flying from the sides of the building and a female figure holding a trident over the front door" Ref.10. (Later during the design development these garlands and the sculpture entitled "Portlandia" were removed.) City ordinances required that all new buildings have fixed glass panes that were accessible to window-washing equipment traveling up and down the facade of the building; the tolerances are very small for this equipment (only ten inches) so the extravagant garlands, instead of being completely erased, were reduced to eight inches deep and made to look deeper by trompe-l'oeil illusion.
Graves is actually responsible only for the exterior of the Portland building, and for the design of the public spaces on only two floors out of fifteen inside. The remaining part was given to a local architect, a fact which many later felt was a mistake. At the opening, the mayor of Portland said enthusiastically: "It will be our Eiffel Tower." And as in the case of the Eiffel Tower, the criticism and hostilities began even before the foundations for the building were laid. A well- known prize-winning architect, Pietro Belluschi, christened it "the juke box" Ref.11. Time magazine called the building a piece of "dangerous pop surrealism" Ref.12. Negative feature articles in the national press were balanced, however, by cautious praise from some of the country's most respected critics. Ada Louise Huxtable of the New York Times declared the Portland building the "Post-Modern Building of the Year" in 1980 Ref.13.
Graves's next great corporate commission was the Humana Building. At 56,000 square feet, the building is about the same size as the Portland Office Building, but with twice the budget. Humana, a hospital management company, is best known around the world as the home of William Schroeder's pioneering heart transplant. In the international competition for its new headquarters, Graves was competing against Norman Foster, Cesar Pelli, Helmut Jahn, Ulrich Franzen and Richard Meier. The winner of such international commissions is usually given a certain amount of "design control." Often such competitions produce landmark structures: the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition of 1922, the Centre Pompidou of 1971, the Grande Arche Tete Defense of 1983. Humana's administrators felt the need to organize a competition in order not only to attract the best talent, but to guarantee a "landmark status" building. For Graves, this was a wonderful opportunity to establish respect and credibility at the higher level of the corporate world-for corporate clients are usually reluctant to commit major funds for architectural "adventures."
Here the executives of Humana showed great interest and sophistication in the design of their headquarters. Even in the final choice of architect, they did not seek the outside advice of an established and respected leader in the field, as is usually done (Johnson provided that service in the Portland commission). Graves was contracted to design both the exterior and the interior of the Humana Building, thus avoiding the incongruities of the Portland building. And, in an unusual step, Humana acted as its own contractors for about half of the building, and began construction immediately before the cost of materials rose. The budget was $60 million, or about $100 per square foot in 1985.
In the Humana Building, Graves created a corporate skyscraper that had no historical precedent whatsoever. Twenty- seven stories high, the structure is in pale pink and rosy granite capped with what appears to be a small Greek temple. In its use of historical motifs and variations on a theme, it is quite unlike any other building except Graves's own Portland building. Like the Portland building and in keeping with Graves's "humanization" of architectural form, Humana is also divided into the classical tripartite elements: base, shaft, and capital.
Although the building's parts can be described in the language of neoclassical architecture, Graves develops out of it a very personal vocabulary. Some might object to the metal truss near the top of the main body of the building, which is reminiscent of Russian Constructivism in its "scaffolding" metal aesthetic. Here Graves tried to make visual reference to the metal-truss bridges across the Ohio River, as well as to the bridge in the building's own vicinity. Humana is skillfully integrated into the site and streetscape of Louisville, a city without much distinctive architecture. It is hoped that Graves's elegant and dignified building will act as a catalyst for architectural awareness along Main Street with its "civilizing presence." There is general agreement that Humana is Graves's finest building to date.
Where does a successful architect on the rise to world prominence go next? For a long time Graves has been designing many other things, not just buildings but furniture, artifacts, silver tea and coffee services, dinner plates, salt and pepper shakers, beds and lamps, rugs and stage curtains, storage and display cabinets, vases, fruit and sugar bowls, candy dishes and candlesticks, wrist-watches and bracelets, necklaces and cigarette boxes, award plaques and medals, desktop telephones and jewelry collections, posters and shopping bags.... Where does a great designer go next? To Disney World, to the new kingdom at EPCOT Center in Orlando, Florida, and eventually to EuroDisneyland near Paris.
This new direction in Graves's career was not kids' stuff, not Goofy or Dumbo, Mickey or Pluto. It was a serious business proposition: a $375 million hotel and convention complex as part of Disney's new Florida expansion program to be developed over the next twenty years. Finally, here was a chance for Graves to put his whimsy and talent into entertainment architecture, to build buildings that will not only speak the common language of the people but "buildings that will make them smile." Two hotels in Florida opened in 1990 (Walt Disney World Dolphin and the Swan Hotel), and one outside Paris in 1992.
The Dolphin is twenty-six stories high with 1510 rooms, easily recognizable because of its central pyramidal roof, a sort of artificial mountain visible from afar and adorned with two dolphins fifty-five feet high. Across the lake from the Dolphin Hotel will be the twelve-story, 760-room Swan Hotel, distinctive not so much because of its unique forms but because of its pair of 47-foot-tall swans and the whimsical waves painted on the exterior of the building. Graves has chosen the two classic symbols of water and warmth, and an expansion of his vocabulary into new and friendly bestiary forms that enrich the existing Disney animal kingdom. How appropriate they are to this adventurous entertainment empire, among the most successful of American corporations, cashing in on the childlike fantasy in all of us.
Ref. 1: Diana G. Undercoffer, "An Interview with Michael Graves," Visual Merchandising & Store Design 114 (April 1983), p. 68D.
Ref. 2: Hiroshi Watanabe, "Interview with Michael Graves," A + U no. 147 (December 1982), n. p.
Ref. 3: Cynthia Saltzman, "Architect Michael Graves: Changing the Horizon," Wall Street Journal, 1 May 1981, p. 25.
Ref. 4: Alexey Grigorieff, "An Interview with Michael Graves," The Princeton Journal: Landscape 2 (1985), p. 157.
Ref. 5: Philip Smith, "Michael Graves: A Modern Architect," Arts Magazine 54 (April 1980), p. 148.
Ref. 6: Smith, "Graves," p. 148.
Ref. 7: "Five on Five," Architectural Forum 138 (May 1973), p. 47.
Ref. 8: Carter Wiseman, "Why Is Everyone Talking About Michael Graves?, Saturday Review 9 (March 1982), p. 44.
Ref. 9: Charlotte Curtis, "Drawing the Battle Lines," New York Times, 2 July 1985, p. C8.
Ref. 10: Saltzman, "Michael Graves," p. 25.
Ref. 11: Charles Jencks, Kings of Infinite Space: Frank Lloyd Wright and Michael Graves (London: Academy Editions, 1983), p. 87.
Ref. 12: Wolf Von Eckardt, "A Pied Piper in Hobbit Land," Time 120 (23 August 1982), p. 62.
Ref. 13: Michael McTwigan, "What is the Focus of Post-Modern Architecture?: An Interview with Michael Graves," American Artist 45 (December 1981), p. 8.
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