To the death of Michael Graves

At the beginning of the week, we were surprised by the early announcement of this year's laureate of the Pritzker Prize, which was awarded to the eighty-nine-year-old German architect Frei Otto. This unexpected news was accompanied by the sad reality that the engineering visionary Frei Otto would not be able to personally accept the prestigious award.
Just a few days later, the architectural world had to come to terms with the loss of another significant figure. On Thursday, March 12, 2015, at the age of eighty, the most prominent representative of postmodernism and one of the members of the legendary 'New York Five' passed away in his home in Princeton.
Michael Graves studied at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard, where he earned a Master's degree in architecture in 1959. He then received a two-year fellowship to stay at the American Academy in Rome. After returning to America, he established his own practice in Princeton in 1954 and simultaneously began teaching at the local university.
Michael Graves was one of the members of the so-called New York Five, which in the 1960s attempted to establish and reinterpret interwar modernism. However, in the 1970s, he aligned himself with Robert Venturi and remained in postmodern ecstasy until the end of his professional career, which was interrupted in 2003 by an infectious disease of the spine that left Graves wheelchair-bound. In 2012, Graves received the Driehaus Prize for Classic Architecture, the most significant award for contemporary traditionalist architects.
In addition to the 350 buildings realized primarily on American soil, Graves' design items, of which he designed more than 2000 types for households and offices, influence the everyday lives of many people around the world.

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