Since founding the firm in 1971, Graham’s work has received wide critical acclaim and has brought the firm more than 130 awards for design excellence. As noted by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, “Graham's designs are invariably assertions of the view that a work of architecture is an element in a larger entity, part both of the literal community of buildings that are its physical neighbors, and of the conceptual community of buildings that are its architectural peers. For Graham, the idea of place is so powerfully real that it always sets the tone. His great skill as an architect is to interpret that tone in consistently resourceful ways.”

Graham is active with the New England cultural arts and architecture communities. He is a Trustee of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and of the Institute of Contemporary Art, a former Director of the Boston Society of Architects, founder and former Chairman of the Boston Foundation for Architecture, and former overseer of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has served as a member of the Advisory Committee on the Arts at Harvard and Radcliffe colleges and on the Committee to Visit the Harvard Art Museums.

On a national level, Graham is a member of the National Committee on Design and of the distinguished College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, and served as a Trustee for the National Building Museum and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Before establishing his own practice, Graham worked under Walter Gropius at The Architects Collaborative. He was educated at Kenyon College, pursued postgraduate study at the Rhode Island School of Design, and received a Master of Architecture and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He also holds several honorary degrees.