Michael Graves

TRENTON, New Jersey (AP) — Celebrated architect Michael Graves, who created whimsical postmodern structures and became well known to the masses later in life for designing products for people with disabilities and household goods such as whistling Alessi teakettles and stainless steel colanders for sale at Target and other stores, died on Thursday. He was 80 years old.

Graves died of natural causes in his home in Princeton, spokeswoman Michelle DiLello said.

He made his name in the 1980s as one of the popularizers of a new kind of architecture, admirers of his work said.

"Michael Graves was a kind of giant of the period of architecture called postmodernism, when architects around the 1980s looked back to European design precedence," said Pauline Saliga, the director of the Society of Architectural Historians. "They kind of rejected the sterility of modernism. They were looking for other design inspirations."

Graves designed buildings all over the world. But his most famous structures may be The Portland Building, the city administrative building in Portland, Oregon, and The Humana Building, a 26-story skyscraper in Louisville, Kentucky.

Those buildings, which opened in 1982, and others used a variety of colors and shapes and have sometimes eccentric juts in and out a little like Lego creations.

President Bill Clinton awarded Graves the National Medal of Arts in 1999, and the American Institute of Architects gave him its gold medal, the highest award for an architect, in 2001.

Later in life, Graves started designing signature household items such as teakettles and colanders for two major American retail stores.

Graves' Alessi kettle, introduced in 1985, features a spout with a bird that sings when the water boils. It's part of a series of Alessi-style items including pitchers and kitchen timers that have been very popular sellers.

In 2003, Graves was paralyzed from the waist down from an infection. He used a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

After the illness, he began a third career, designing for people with disabilities. He designed items including a wheelchair, heating pads and bathroom handrails and accessible homes for the Wounded Warrior Project.

He was recognized by another president for this work when President Barack Obama named him to the United States Access Board in 2013.

Graves, born in Indianapolis, studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. He won the Rome Prize in 1960 and spent two years studying in Italy.

After he returned to the U.S., he began a four-decade career teaching at Princeton University.

GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press




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