Michael Graves

Born in Indianapolis, Michael Graves has taught architecture in Princeton since 1962. His architectural works include the Portland Building and the Humana Building, the extension of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Newark Museum. He created the best-selling 9093 kettle for Alessi

What Alessi says about Graves:
As early as January 1980, during our first visit to his big studio in Princeton, Michael Graves told us that from then on he would be spending at least half his time on design. It was a definitive statement which, moreover, corresponded to his great potential in this field. Michael does not like theory even though he once confessed his desire to develop an "American" design. In any case, between the eighties and nineties he showed an incredible ability to tune in to the tastes of even the average public: for this reason I consider him to be a forerunner of "Super & Popular". Graves' highly personal and easy to recognize formal style blends influences from the European tradition, Art Deco, American "pop", and flashes of pre-Columbian culture. He has shown he can bewitch the public like only very few of the designers with whom I've worked. I think that his success derives from his wholly uninhibited approach to the economic dimension which this activity inevitably entails, an attitude that enables him to read the expectations of the public more clearly than his European counterparts."