IDEAS AND WORKS OF

MICHAEL GRAVES

G.BHUVANA SUNDARI
722117251013
•Born on April 1934 in Indianapolis , Indiana ,
USA.
•He is an American architect
•He received his architectural training at the
university of Cincinnati and Harvard university
•He began his practice in Princeton , New
Jersey
PHILOSOPHY :
•He introduced his firm MICHAEL GRAVES AND
ASSOCIATES in is
•His architecture 1964.
meant to be legible and a
part of everyday life
•He has a playful interest in reworking the
commonly accepted language of architecture
into a uniquely personal expression of what
might become without losing its identity
•He constantly practices on the rules and
principles of architecture .
•He desires to create a pleasant and a
comfortable environment for the people in his
building .
•His constant experimentation with architectural
form and language at the levels of abstraction
and figuration , color , scale , size and structural
ARCHITECTURAL STYLE:

•He creates building’s significance with time

and place .
•His designs buildings were near-populist
attitude , so that the non architect could also
recognize the distinct architectural element
•His references from the environment are
A curve referring to the clouds
above
A yellow rail referring to the sun
A terracotta base suggesting the
grounding in the earth
A mural expanding the
perspective of the room
•ARCHITECTURAL
He emphasis his building
DETAILS:primarily horizontal or
vertical .
••AInfluenced
hierarchical
by route established
the roman style . through the
repetitive
• spaces
grand interior spaces broken down into
•the
Relationship between
human scale . the indoor and the outdoor by
pushing
•Cubicalthe wall referring
façade as far outtomake bay windows
a classical column in
order
• to bring base
light in .
, shaft , and the cornice
•Windows forms the basic element of the surface
texture , due to the proportion and repetition
•Uses the column in the façade as surface treatment
and defining the column head with the cornice of the
building entrance .
•Façade are symmetrical and the linearity is broken by
adding vertical bands of colors and windows
•Tries to achieve neoclassical style
 GRAVES WORKS :

GRAVES WAREHOUSE RESIDENCE , PRINCETON

ated from a ruined warehouse . So grave referred it as “wareh

 This house is a personal
statement and a private
retreat , where grave keeps
the furniture , sculpture ,
books pictures and other
objects accumulated during
Grave sees hishis
house as a place to display his
lifetime
collection which will one day be available to the
interested public

•The warehouse is an L shaped building , consisting of

the northern wing and the eastern wing .
•The original north wing , hidden from the street , had
large doors where trucks regularly disgorged loads of
household accessories
 The later wing ,
at the right
angle , was
much narrower .
He installed a
kitchen ,
bathroom and
lived like a
student first
Later he tackled
the northern
EXTERIOR : wing .
And the house
The exterior has a quiet monumentality was , which derives
opened at
from the vernacular barns and farm houses 1992.of the
Italian countryside.
The elevation of the house cannot be read in terms of
the conventional classic design .
Informal and vernacular in inspiration , they equally
have an almost cubist abstraction which suggests
connection with grave’s earlier house
The chimney stack in particular, is a boldly expressed
sculptural design .
The unity of the house and the garden is the key theme
.
Idealized landscape
Warm and slightly irregular texture of the stucco
contributes greatly to the overall effect of the exterior .
Highly sculptural in treatment and rigorous in the
exclusion of ornamentation , the warehouse looks
beyond the replication and more genuine traditionalism
.
 VIEWS OF
THE EXTERIOR
INTERIORS :

LIVING ROOM :

•It is made for comfort rather than mere show . The

relatively low floor ceiling heights in the building –
dictated the original structure - have been cleverly
utilized to produce interiors of some intensity
•Alcoves to .the living
room are distinctly
soanean in form , but
reflects the
dimension of the
original store rooms
used by the Princeton
students to store
everything from
books grand pianos
•A terra-cotta colored
walls sets furnishings
DINING
that range ROOM:
from
antiques to chairs
•designed
The dining byroom is lit
Michael
by tall .metal framed
graves
windows which look
onto the courtyard
which seems to form
a natural extension to
the space .
•The chimney piece
has an austerity
which is more
modernist than
 STUDY ROOM :

• It has a small functional

study room on the first floor
•He often expresses himself in
the delicate , enigmatic water
colors he paints , on his tours
•Study room is lit by the
square window on the front
LIBRARY : wall .

The library is placed such that it

behaves as connecting area between
living room and east garden .
The library has a sense of verticality
and highly architectural in treatment
like a street of colonnaded buildings .
Skylight enlightens the volume of the
library at the top

The warehouse is highly a personal building .

The easy flow of the spaces and the essential
informality of the building provide the reminder of its
architect’s root in the modern movement.
The warehouse is indeed a powerful strand in
contemporary American design .
Its quiet beauty is the work of a man who has played a
key role in reshaping the face of the architecture in the
late 12th century .
GRAVES WORKS :

•Architects: Michael Graves
•Area: 362400.0 ft²
•Year: 1982
PORTLAND BUILDING ,PORTLAND , UNITED STATES

The Portland Building, by architect and product

designer Michael Graves, is considered the first
major built work of Postmodernist architecture.
The design, which displays numerous symbolic
elements on its monumental facades, stands in
purposeful contrast to the functional Modernist
architecture that was dominant at the time.
As Graves explains of his architecture: it’s “a
symbolic gesture, an attempt to re-establish a
language of architecture and values that are not a
part of modernist homogeneity.”
 •In 1979 the City
of Portland sponsored a
competition for the design of
the Portland Service Building,
located on a 40,000 square-foot
block in downtown Portland.
•The project, aimed to hold the
city’s municipal offices, was
The young Michael Graves uniquely located
submitted adjacent to
his ambitious
design, despite his lack of City Hall, the County
experience, partially due to
Courthouse
an ally he had in the jury—his and the
friend Philip Chapman
Johnson.
Graves’ colorful low-cost Square Park.
design impressed the jury,
who discarded his competitors' costly glass and
concrete designs, and awarded Graves the
commission, knowing the design was bound to
•The building attempts
put Portland on to createitadid.
the map—which continuum between
past and present: it’s a symmetrical block with four off-
white, stucco-covered rectangular facades featuring
reinterpreted Classical elements, such as over-scaled
keystones, pilasters and belvederes.
•The building is set on a two-story base, reminiscent of a
Greek pedestal, which divides it into the Classical three-
part partition of base-body-top. Furthermore, Graves
•added
Reactionsymbolism through
to the building color—green
was mixed among for architects
the ground,
bluePortlanders
and for the sky,as
etc—in order to visually
well. Aesthetically, thetie the building
highly-styled
to its environment
elements, andribbons
such as the location. 
and medallions, were
critiqued as lacking the dignity of an official government
building.
•Others claimed the design was overloaded with
symbolism and too preoccupied with references to the
past.
•More seriously,
however, the building
was criticized for
“superficially”
incorporating a
traditional aesthetic
without allowing said
traditional elements to
be functional.
•For example, although
the design incorporates
arcades, which
conventionally provide
a sheltered, interstitial
space between the
pedestrian and the city,
the arcades that line
the three facades of
the Portland Building
have only two entries
set above street level,
making them difficult
to access. Similar
difficulties of
accessibility plague the
fourth, park-facing
facade, which has only
two small doors that
lead to a windowless
restaurant and a back
lobby.
•Users of the building
The Portland building is considered a major key-
point in architecture history, bringing
postmodernism out of the academy and into the
public realm. It paved the way for later, more
mature postmodernist buildings, such as the Walt
Disney world swan and dolphin
resort (1990), Denver central library (1996), and
the St. Colette school (2006).
SITE PLAN
ELEVATIONS
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
TYPICAL FLOOR PLAN