Detlef Mertins: Who did you know? Whose work did you use in your projects?
Bruce Graham: Alexander Calder was a very good friend of mine, and I used Henry Moore quite a lot. Calder was a character, but he was phenomenal—a wonderful guy, a great artist, and a terrific sense of humor. When he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania he got interested in how to help starving people around the world. He went to the Cleveland Clinic Hospital and learned a lot about that. Then, after the War, he went to Johns Hopkins University.
DM: What appealed to you about his work?
BG: It was simply beautiful. Calder and Moore were also very responsive to architecture and urbanism. Unlike Picasso. The same with Joan Miró. He's a terrific person. I would talk with him in Spanish.
Do you know the story behind the Picasso in Chicago? There were three firms working on the Daley Center, and the others all wanted to make a Miesian building. I talked them out of it and into the big span, since it was a court building and you needed to express the larger spaces. One day Bill Hartman took a vote on who should be the artist. One person said Henry Moore, the second said Henry Moore, the third said Henry Moore. I said Pablo Picasso, and Bill said, "Picasso wins." Then it went to the mayor, and the mayor said, "Bill, if you say so we'll do it." Bill went to Picasso and asked him if he would do a sculpture. He made a maquette. When Bill brought it back, I said, "Bill, it's too small. It just doesn't relate to the building." So we went back to Picasso, and he was delighted.
He made a huge maquette, and then the mayor said, "How much money does he want, Bill?" Bill said, "He didn't say." So the mayor made out a check for two million dollars. Bill took it to Picasso, came back, and the mayor said, "Did he take the check?" "He tore it up." "Does he want more money?" "He doesn't want any money." The mayor said, "Why not?" "Because Chicago is the only city that had ever asked him to do a civic sculpture." So he did it for nothing.
When Henry Moore and Miró both heard about that, they decided to also donate the sculptures they were doing for the city. Henry Moore did a big one that's now in the Art Institute of Chicago. Artists like to be involved in urban architecture. After all, what could be more important?
One time I did a building in Wichita, Kansas. I asked Calder if he would do a mobile in the big space. Because the poor city didn't have any squares, I made the building with a glass corner. He said he would and came to Wichita with six different maquettes. He asked them to choose one. Of course, they ended up choosing the right one. Then he told the city, "Okay, you can have all the others too." He gave them all free of charge to the University. Artists don't give a damn about money.
DM: I believe you were a painter yourself at one point.
BG: When I was at the University of Pennsylvania, studying architecture, I did painting and sculpture, and was quite good.
DM: Did that inform your architecture in any way?
BG: Not really. The Beaux-Arts professors of that time insisted that all the architects learn to paint and do sculpture. They were right. Then, when you make drawings to express your building, you know something about drawing.
DM: Did you collect art?
BG: I've got about six Calders, all of which he gave me. We've also got a Henry Moore, some Peruvian pre-Columbian work, and some pieces by the Croatian Rovenj Grisa.
DM: Let's talk a little bit about interiors and furniture. Did you subscribe to the idea of total design?
BG: In some cases, like the Upjohn Building. Jane Abend, who later became my wife, designed a lot of the furniture. because it's a very private kind of office building owned by a family. That's one case where total design makes sense. But at the Sears Tower there are a million tenants, and everyone is going to need their own design. By then Jane and I were married, and she was no longer working at SOM. She did the interiors for some law firms there. There are some very good interior designers at SOM and also outside of SOM.
DM: Were you ever tempted to design furniture yourself? Did you want to work at that scale?
BG: No.
DM: Why?
BG: I was quite happy with Mies chairs, so why should I get into that? Just buy a Mies chair.
DM: Let's go back now to talk a little. bit more about the city and urbanism. You once said that SOM was more involved in making cities, that you were more interested in building cities than in building buildings.
BG: Building parts of cities. I didn't think that each building should be a temple. Rather it should be part of the whole city. The relationship between buildings is very important to me.
DM: You've spoken out against aspects of modern urbanism, against expressways and sprawl. What can an architect do about infrastructure and development at that scale?
BG: We could have done much more for Chicago if the governor hadn't killed the expressway program, which called for the following: when you come from the airport to the city, it's terrible. All the trucks have to come downtown. With Mayor Daley, we agreed that the trucks should go around the city and not come downtown and then go on to Indiana. I don't know if you ever heard of Joe Passenau. He was a professor of planning in St. Louis and was part of SOM for a while, I asked Joe to help us with this. and he did a terrific job. The neighborhoods loved it. They loved the way our road was graded so there would be no noise into the neighborhood. Then the governor killed the program. They should still do it.
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