Michael Graves (1934–2015)

SHORTLY AFTER THE DEATH of Michael Graves I visited one of his first important works: the Benacerraf Pavilion in Princeton, New Jersey. The project, completed in 1969 and one of two by Graves published in the book Five Architects, is modest in size but exuberant in form. It confirms John Whiteman’s assertion that “the pavilion is the essay form of architecture.” For Graves, this small commission was an opportunity to comment on the plastic language of Le Corbusier’s purist works of the 1920s. The subject matter of Graves’s built essay is the tension between plane and volume, abstraction and

books January 2015

architects’ drawings

THE WORKING DRAWING: THE ARCHITECT’S TOOL is a beautiful book, and like many beautiful things, it has a touch of melancholy to it. Looking at the examples collected here, even those from recent decades, it’s hard not to feel some sense of loss: Nobody draws like that anymore. Not only has drawing practice been radically transformed by the computer, but the structure of the discipline itself has changed. Architects operate in a global arena today, subject to the ever-tighter time constraints and increasingly uniform standards imposed by clients, the building industry, and regulatory agencies. In