A highlight of my student years was meeting American architect Michael Graves. Not just meeting him, but spending significant time with him. The date was September 1985 and a bunch of us were on a study trip to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), following the Alvar Aalto symposium in Jyväskylä, Finland. Considering his absolute superstar status at the time, Graves was pretty relaxed with us. He roamed the streets and sketched buildings like a regular guy; we all sat together on the bus, leaning over seat backs so we could talk as a group. Graves regaled us with stories of visiting the Reagan White House; he was particularly delighted when a Soviet architecture student had never heard of him, clearly loving the moment of anonymity. And at the USSR-Finland border, where we were detained for many hours, he did a sketch in that classic MG style in my sketchbook. To this day, it remains one of my most precious possessions. At Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths, Sussman/Prejza & Company’s wayfinding sonotubes for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics form the pillars of a reconstructed kiosk.
Personal memories like these from the 1980s make me feel right at home in the current exhibit at the CCA, Architecture Itself and Other Postmodernist Myths. Including 420 objects and images, there?s a memory trigger from 1965-1990 around every corner.
Apart from sparking my own nostalgia, this show is big and it includes some big objects. For example, a Peter Eisenman stair...