We've taken on health care in a big way in our office, ever since nine years ago when I was paralyzed. I was in eight different hospitals, three different rehab centers, and all the rooms were dreadful. As an architect, designer, and patient, I can do something to help.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of improving healthcare environments based on personal experiences.
Michael Graves reflects on his transformative experience as a patient in healthcare facilities, highlighting the dismal conditions he encountered. Drawing from his insights as both an architect and designer, he asserts that he has a responsibility to enhance the healthcare environment, showcasing how personal adversity can inspire a commitment to positive change in society.
In practice
During a keynote address about health innovation.
Form must never trump function. Some objects are made to look so smooth, you don't know where to pick them up or how to turn them on. If I'm designing a garlic press or cheese grater, I need my hand to fit comfortably on it. I like to know, instinctively, how to use it.
Good design should be available to everyone - and I do mean everyone. What I spent on the wheelchair I'm in could buy a small Mercedes. It's not only unfair to me; it's unfair to someone who's indigent but has the same needs. My goal is to make all objects affordable.
Instead of using the machine as a metaphor for architecture, as Le Corbusier did, I use the human body. I want the public to know that it's them I'm designing for.
I believe well-designed places and objects can actually improve healing, while poor design can inhibit it.
Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster.
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had haunted my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Of all the sense of hearing acute.
There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.
I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: 'Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?
The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity.
Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.