Quotes by Michael Graves

Im working on a school of architecture in China. Its rare that an architect gets to design a school of architecture, and here I get to do it. Im so pleased that they asked me.

You can never draw enough or read enough - reading about architecture, in other words.

Good design to me is both appearance and functionality together. Its the experience that makes it good design.

If I have a style, I am not aware of it.

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.

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

It was always my goal to up the ante on good design, and Ive devoted much of my career to this.

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.

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

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.

Good design should be available to everyone - and I do mean everyone. What I spent on the wheelchair Im in could buy a small Mercedes. Its not only unfair to me its unfair to someone whos indigent but has the same needs. My goal is to make all objects affordable.