Michael Graves, who died yesterday at the age of 80, was born in Indianapolis and left to study architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Harvard University. He taught architecture at Princeton University for 40 years and is known as one of the most prominent architects of the latter 20th century.
He returned to Indiana numerous times to design buildings such as the Indianapolis Art Center (1996) in Broad Ripple and the NCAA Hall of Champions (1997) in Indianapolis. Graves visited Ball State University's relatively young College of Architecture and Planning in 1974 to give a lecture titled "A Little of the Old In and Out," a recording of which resides in the Drawings + Documents Archive. In the lecture, available on the University Libraries' Digital Media Repository, Graves gives a fascinating discussion of his projects, concepts of how to look at space, and extensively discusses the paintings of Matisse, Picasso, and Cezanne in relation to his own work. He also discusses the work of other architects, such as Le Corbusier.
