Noted postmodern architect Graves, 80, dies

TRENTON, N.J. – Celebrated architect Michael Graves, who created whimsical postmodern structures and later became well known to the masses 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 Thursday. He was 80.

Graves died of natural causes at 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 may be The Portland Building, the city administrative building in Portland, 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 him the National Medal of Arts in 1999.

Later in life, Graves started designing signature household items such as teakettles and colanders for Minneapolis-based Target Corp., and he added a line at JCPenney. Those items brought a famous architect into the kitchens and bathrooms of millions of homes.

Graves’ Alessi kettle, featuring a spout with a bird that sings when the water boils, is part of a series of popular Alessi-style items including pitchers and kitchen timers.