Michael Graves Quotes

American - Architect Born: July 9, 1934

Good design should be available to everyone - and I do mean everyone. What I spent on the wheelchair I'm in could buy a small Mercedes. It's not only unfair to me; it's unfair to someone who's indigent but has the same needs. My goal is to make all objects affordable.

Michael Graves

I believe well-designed places and objects can actually improve healing, while poor design can inhibit it.

Michael Graves

When I design a building, I'm making sure you and I can get to the front door, there's enough of a threshold for entry, and that the rooms are in a logical sequence.

Michael Graves

In designing hardware to be used every day, it was important to keep both the human aspects and the machine in mind. What looks good also often feels good.

Michael Graves

When I started my own practice, I was criticized, not because I was doing product design but because, like Le Corbusier, I was insisting on paintings in all of my buildings. I would paint wall murals in the houses that I designed, just as he did in the '20s and '30s.

Michael Graves

I taught at Princeton for 39 years, and the school of architecture on the campus is the worst building on the campus.

Michael Graves

The cost is minimal, but one of the things that you want in a universal design is to make the plan as open as you can... and to still have walls around bedrooms and that sort of thing, and to keep the corridors wide enough so the wheelchair can do a 360 in the corridor.

Michael Graves

Instead of using the machine as a metaphor for architecture, as Le Corbusier did, I use the human body. I want the public to know that it's them I'm designing for.

Michael Graves