A Genuine Concern for Design

Very little went by design at a Laguna Niguel talk this week by architect and designer Michael Graves.

Though the focus at the Laguna Design Center’s Market 1996 was to have been the future of design, most of it was devoted to what Graves jokingly referred to as Art History 101 and a survey of his recent projects--mostly in Japan and the United States, but also Belgium, Egypt, China and Taiwan.

China and Taiwan?

“I hope the buildings get built before things get nasty,” he said.

The Design Center hall accommodated 250, but 700 showed up. The Princeton-based Graves agreed to give two talks, the first time he’s done that in a single day. An auxiliary showroom was outfitted with video monitors to handle the overflow. Though the presentation was originally penciled in at one hour, both shows easily stretched to 2 1/2 hours. Nobody complained.

While signing books at a reception afterward, Graves, 61, mentioned what he’d like to see incorporated more into home design today:

“That which is genuine,” he said. “There is so much ersatz that’s designed today. How can we be like Spanish colonial? People have no confidence in doing buildings that represent us, yet they think to represent another time, another spirit, another place.

“Not that those are bad,” he continued. “I look at this landscape that’s around here, and it does seem a pity, don’t you think, that the landscape, the houses and the buildings are not somehow integrated one with the other? That they [don’t] have a role?”

Graves’ work may be among the most recognizable of any architect working today. His postmodernist leanings embrace such signature elements as vivid exterior colors, historical reference points and obvious geometric volumes. Given his huge projects around the world, Orange County’s own Graves jewel, the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, seems almost a footnote.

Other Southern California examples include the Disney Co. headquarters in Burbank, which uses relief sculptures of the Seven Dwarfs as supportive columns; the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara; and the Aventine hotel and office complex in La Jolla. The mammoth Metropolis mixed-use master plan for downtown Los Angeles was commissioned in 1988 but has yet to be built.

The Princeton University architecture professor has also designed jewelry, watches, wooden photo frames, clocks, bookends, carpets and floor tiles, dinnerware, flatware and mailboxes, not to mention complete giftware lines for FAO Schwarz and Disney. His stainless steel Alessi teakettle is a classic.

Hardly looking up from autographing bookmarks and such books as “Michael Graves: Buildings and Projects 1990-1994” (Rizzoli, 1995), Graves tried to pinpoint what sets him apart from other designers.

“The difference comes in what I would call the anthropomorphic interests that I have,” he said. “The chairs and couches are not just comfortable. [They’re] about the beginnings of these things, how chairs and the like, or tables, are seen mythically. . . . A lot of people experiment with materials, a lot of people are trying to do what I might term zippy, things that aren’t necessarily cute but that have a very short life span.”

He stopped to have his photo taken; when he continued, he said he nevertheless believes furniture design on the whole is very healthy right now.

“There are many things on the market. The fabrics, the quality, is very high. We all grew up in times when there was very little to choose from. [I’m] trying to make pieces one can live with quite comfortably but that still have a kind of edge so that you are aware of them--you know that somebody cared enough to make the best piece of furniture they possibly could.”

Earlier, Graves used slides to show how compositional ideals of still-lifes, dating from ancient Rome to the 20th century, have affected his work, examining, for instance, matters of symmetry versus asymmetry. Toward the end of the show, he focused on his home, “a Tuscan barn” constructed in the 1920s by the same Italian builders responsible for the Gothic-style towers at Princeton University.

“I thought it was a real bargain, $30,000,” he said. “It was a 7,000-square-foot warehouse that had never been occupied by humans, and it really was a house of wares. People stored their books and pianos there. I counted the first day 44 tiny little rooms about the size of this podium. It had no plumbing, heating or electricity. I didn’t think that was a problem--I was an architect!”

According to Graves, the warehouse and his domestic life were in equal shambles at the time, and he set about repairing both. (He only succeeded with the warehouse.) For starters he added a layer to the walls of the house, which was made of stucco and clay tile. “It was a little breezy,” he recalled. “It didn’t cost $30,000 in the end.”

His solutions to the problems presented by the warehouse were often novel. One such case involved a very narrow space left by a former stairway.

“It would have taken a lot of structural gymnastics to change that space,” Graves explained, “so I said I’ll take this narrow space and make it even narrower. Most people would say you’re nuts, you’ve got to make it look wider, with right proportions and so on. I made book stacks out of it-- book shelves looking like buildings, holding books about architecture.”

His home contains a 2,500-volume architecture and decorative arts library.

Graves’ 70-person firm frequently designs the interiors, furnishings, fixtures and artwork for its architectural clients. Graves is principal designer on all projects. He showed a slide of chairs in his home that the firm originally produced for the Aventine hotel in La Jolla.

“I liked those chairs so much I had them made for myself. Nobody else [liked them]--I think I sold two. They’ll be collectors’ items some day,” he said with a chuckle. “You’ll be sorry.”

He concluded the presentation with a pair of slides, one showing a table setting using a pattern he designed for Ellesse, the other a still-life by French architect Le Corbusier. He explained that even when he composes a table setting, whether it be through the use of lighting or a prop such as an upturned musical instrument, he tries to suggest a human presence.

Our interiors, Graves reflected, are “composed by us, made by us, configured by us in a way that portrays our lives even when we’re not there. I was once asked to comment on the interiors of a friend of mine. I said the wonderful thing about her interiors is that when you walk into them, even if they [haven’t been] occupied, it always appears that we have just left the scene. The sense of habitation is still in the room.”

He discussed the diverse elements of Le Corbusier’s still-life: An open book with blank pages turns thoughts to the scholarly life, a pipe symbolizes recreational pursuits, and a wineglass stands for sustenance and the renewal of life. “Not just a glass, a wineglass,” he noted, which suggests a social aspect as well.

He points, finally, to a small black die.

“The cube shows the rational architecture we start from, but it also depicts the idea of chance within the symmetrical landscape or composition. . . .

“Perhaps one reads too much into pictures like this. But when I’m given a chance to make a table setting on a table, or a chance to make a table within a room, or the room within the house, or the house within the block . . . [I am] always recomposing, trying to get a little closer to our intuitions--composing, once and for all, our new domestic landscape.”