FACulty PRINCETON- school of ARCHITECTURE rumor- SPRING 2010 ---------------------------------------------
PRINCETON- school of ARCHITECTURE rumor- SPRING 2010 ---------------------------------------------
Michael Graves: 2010 Topaz Medallion Winner
In a ceremony held in New Orleans in March, Michael Graves, the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture Emeritus at Princeton’s School of Architecture was awarded the 2010 Topaz Medallion for Excellence in Architectural Education. The Topaz Medallion is awarded jointly by the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and Graves will also be honored at the AIA National convention in June. The Topaz recognizes an extraordinary 40 years of teaching at Princeton. From 1962 to 2002 Michael Graves was a charismatic presence in the design studio. The dialogue between his own creative practice and his commitment to architecture as a visual art influenced generations of architects and educators. Significantly, since 1976 when Princeton Professor Jean Labatut was awarded the first Topaz Medallion, only three others have received both the AIA Gold medal—the highest award given to a practitioner—and the Topaz. Michael is indeed the consummate architect/educator. In addition to Labatut and Graves, Princeton alumni and faculty to have won the Topaz include: Robert Geddes, Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon and Alan Balfour. This is a great honor for Graves and the School, and we will celebrate Michael’s achievement with a gathering of former students and colleagues at the School May 28th. One of the keystones of Michael’s years teaching design at Princeton was the short exercise based on Gunnar Asplund’s 1918 Villa Snellman, which was introduced in the early 1970s (long before Asplund was ‘discovered’ by the rest of the discipline). Michael’s 1975 article “The Swedish Connection” is at once a masterpiece of close formal reading and a gentle manifesto for a new way of thinking about architecture. He argues for experience and meaning over plan and organization— a recovery of architecture’s symbolic capacity. He emphasizes the presence of the perceiving, embodied subject, which finds its analogue in the framed view of nature through the vertical window. Finally, he calls attention to the tactile quality of materials and surfaces, and nudges students toward a solution where a “juxtaposition of elements making comment on the original may enrich the meaning of the old relative to the new.” As Peter Carl points out, the choice of Asplund as an emblem for a ‘return to history’ is a canny one. The Villa Snellman prefigures the complex synthesis of tradition and modernity that would mark Asplund’s later career; this same synthesis in turn became the hallmark of Michael’s Graves’ own immense contribution to both teaching and practice. —Stan Allen
Christian Zapatka, model, Asplund Villa Snellman exercise, 1986.
Peter Carl on michael graves I am certainly honoured to help celebrate Michael Graves’ eminently deserved Topaz award— he might consider these remarks a small expression of gratitude for his generosity and for the wisdom of his teaching. During the late 60s and early 70s, when Walter Gieseking’s rendering of Debussy’s Preludes alternated with Bob Dylan and Cream, and when architecture seemed exposed to a similar range of possibilities, I served as a sounding-board for themes Graves was exploring. It was only when Stan Allen reminded me of my involvement in the origins of the Villa Snellman exercise which Graves used for teaching that I recognised how emblematic it was of the state of play in architecture at the time. The title of Graves’ article on the exercise, “The Swedish Connection,” alluded to the famous movie, suggesting an alternative to certain French addictions. Both these addictions and the openness to Asplund carried the authority of Colin Rowe, as well as a procedure for reading architectural plans since the Renaissance as if produced yesterday. However, it was Michael who recognised in Asplund’s Villa Snellman—which I had never before seen— a vehicle for maintaining a dialogue with the Corbusian inheritance whilst at the same time (continued on p.08)
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Faculty jury in a graduate studio directed by Charles Gwathmey, New York City, 1968. Faculty: Michael Wurmfeld, Kenneth Frampton, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey; students: Chris Chimera, Russell Swanson, Michael Sena.
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