Michael Graves

There are lots of other stories in the book of friends and families, but also architecture and architects.

Uh, and in 1987, you got a phone call from Michael Graves asking if you'd be interested in taking a teaching position at Princeton, and you put the phone down on him.

I did.

Yeah.

And, um, the phone rang again.

Like, it just rang again.

I picked it up, and, um, Michael Graves said, "I'm, I'm sorry about that break, that break in connection.

There must've been something wrong with the line.

So Then you could use the precedent.

Just say you use the precedent of Michael Graves in the 60s with the Hanselman House, still using neoplasticism, still using cardboard frame posts and beams and framing them you know, as part of your system of aesthetics and also looking at the volume of space, which different functions or different requirements needed throughout that journey of discovering the different spaces.

I've actually gone... away from asking the basic questions about the low tide and the high tide, actually.

Suddenly, I adopted Hanselman's house approach.

Now, it could be a trial and error.

You could just try it out.

But how, why did Michael Graves use that approach? Because he's taking people...

with A Journey Around the House.

I'll tell you.

When you compare, say, Portlandia by Michael Graves to, say, the broken pediment in, I think it was the AT&T building in New York City.

I mean, the best postmodern building was Philip Johnson's building.

So it doesn't matter.

He invented the Genius Bar, he killed the cash register, He put a glass cube on Fifth Avenue that became the most photographed spot in New York City.

And before Apple, he brought Michael Graves to Target.

After Apple, he ran JC Penney as CEO.

He's also the founder and CEO of Enjoy Technology.

I went to Target during the 90s when Target and Walmart were really head to head to see who's going to win the physical discount store title.

And Walmart was coming from Bentonville, kind of a rural heritage and Target was a suburban heritage and they went head to head.

And I had the chance, like you mentioned with Michael Graves, to really put design on the map for Target.

And that reinforced our image as Target.

Prior to his time at Apple, Ron was highly regarded as...

For the work he did with Michael Graves to bring good design to all the merchant leader at Target, their collaboration set the stage for brands hundreds of later design partnerships and cemented Target as America's premier upscale discount retailer.

Ron, he now lives in San Francisco, and he was so gracious as to hang out with me today and you.

So here we go.

You know, we did that with design a target.

You know, I had this idea that why should good design be expensive and people thought it was crazy.

And we took a mass market retail and brought in this designer product from Michael Graves and really told the story.

And it turned out it's exactly what people wanted.

Right, right.

They had Michael Graves, the architect and designer, do ladles.

You could buy a Michael Graves dustpan.

Here's the architect of some of the most interesting buildings of the 80s, and he was designing your freaking dustpan.

So they had all sorts of panache.

I want to bring up your target experience, too.

I didn't realize you were so heavily involved in the Michael Graves.

Yeah, that was my little brain.

Yeah, that I remember that

I still have a ladle and a pie server thing.

Aren't they the best? From

Michael Graves.

And the ladle especially is so pretty.

I was East Coast, so it's like...

You know, my undergrad was for sure people who worked for Peter Eisman, people who worked for Michael Graves, people who worked for Meyer, you know, all the fives.

For sure, Gary was in the mix too somehow.

Morphosis was there, but it was really, Palladio 100% was part of my education, strangely.