Kevin Roche

Eamonn Kevin Roche FAIA (June 14, 1922 – March 1, 2019) was an Irish-born American Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Kevin Roche was the archetypal modernist and "member of an elite group of third generation modernist architects — James Stirling, Jorn Utzon, and Robert Venturi — and is considered to be the most logical and systematic designer of the group. He and his partner John Dinkeloo of the firm KRJDA produced over a half-century of matchless creativity."
Roche and Dinkeloo were responsible for the design/master planning of over 200 built projects in both the U.S. and abroad. These projects include 8 museums, 38 corporate headquarters, 7 research facilities, performing arts centers, theaters, and campus buildings for six universities. In 1967 he created the master plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and thereafter designed all of the new wings and installation of many collections, including the reopened American and Islamic wings.
Born in Dublin and a graduate from University College Dublin, Roche went to the United States to study with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In the U.S., he became the principal designer for Eero Saarinen and opened his own architectural firm in 1967.
Among other awards, Roche received the Pritzker in 1982, the Gold Medal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990, and the AIA Gold Medal in 1993.
Roche was born in Dublin, Ireland, during one of the most tumultuous periods in Irish history: the Irish Civil War. Eamon Roche, Kevin's father, had been jailed twice for "revolutionary activities". Kevin was born during his father's second imprisonment. After Eamon was released from prison, he moved his family far away from war-torn Dublin to the pastoral hamlet of Mitchelstown in southwestern Ireland. Situated at the foothills of the Galtee Mountain Range, Roche's upbringing was anything but typical. It was forged by Eamon's keen managerial oversight of the Mitchelstown Dairy Co-operative in which Kevin worked alongside his father as dairy farmers. Eamon Roche successfully annexed all the surrounding dairy cooperatives, forging them into the largest in southwest Ireland. Later, the creamery was bought out by KerryGold Creamery.
Roche's life-changing moment came when his father asked him to design a warehouse to store the cheese that the dairy farms produced. Seeing his natural abilities unfold, Eamon enrolled the young Roche in a secondary school in Cashel, County Tipperary called Rockwell College. It is a well-known school in Ireland where Éamon de Valera, one of the Republic of Ireland's founding fathers, once taught mathematics. While Roche attended Rockwell College, his interest in architecture came about after reading a book by the English architect John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture. He recalled that the book "was not the easiest to read but was very interesting".
In 1940, Kevin returned to Dublin to continue his interest in architecture at University College of Dublin, or UCD. His first architectural drawing was of a pig enclosure composed of concrete blocks. Though initially trained in German Beaux Arts, this gave way to modernism and post-modernism interests. After graduating from UCD in 1945, Roche made the circuit with practically every well-known modernist of architecture: Michael Scott in Dublin from 1945 to 1946, Maxwell Fry in London from summer to fall of 1946, then Mies van der Rohe and Ludwig Hilberseimer at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1948.
After less than one year at IIT, Roche did not have enough money to continue for a second year. Since he could not receive his master's degree without funds, he instead thought of putting his architectural skills to practical use. In 1949, he moved to New York City and "badgered the UN Planning Office for a job". He was hired at the planning office for the United Nations Headquarters building in New York City. He began working on the United Nations complex at the firm of Harrison & Abramovitz and stayed on for eight months. During Christmas of 1950, he left to visit his family back in Ireland, but when he returned, his job had been eliminated.
Penniless and uncertain of his future in the United States, Roche contemplated returning home to Ireland. But an architect at the UN, sympathetic to his plight, recommended he call the firm of Saarinen, Swanson, and Associates, where the 83-year-old Eliel Saarinen still practiced in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. The firm's famous father was complemented by the family's talent: second wife Loja, son (Eero), and daughter (Pipsan). The firm had said that Eero Saarinen would be going to New York to interview prospective candidates. After spending an evening at New York's famous Stork Club with a cousin from Ireland, Roche was unexpectedly called for an interview the following morning. Roche went to the interview, and as Saarinen was talking to him, Roche had fallen asleep. Roche recalls that Saarinen was still talking when he awoke, and was nonetheless hired. He moved to Michigan and began working for the firm, which had undergone a name change to be known as Eero Saarinen and Associates (ESA).
After his father Eliel died, Eero Saarinen moved up to assume directorship. In 1950, Roche joined the firm. His future partner, John Dinkeloo (1918-1991), joined the firm in 1951 after he had left the architectural form of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Chicago. They became lifelong friends and business partners. There, Roche also met his future wife, Jane Claire Tuohy, with whom he eventually had five children. In 1954, he became the Principal Design Associate to Saarinen and assisted him on all projects from that time until Saarinen's death in September 1961.
Later, Roche and Dinkeloo moved the practice to Hamden, Connecticut. Saarinen's firm morphed into Roche-Dinkeloo Associates or KRJDA. Today, the firm continues on as Roche Modern, where Roche's son, Eamon, is currently managing director. Thus, Roche and Dinkeloo laid the groundwork for the preeminent architectural firm which has been coined the "poster child architectural firm of corporate America".
In 1966, Roche and Dinkeloo formed Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates and completed Saarinen's projects. They completed twelve major unfinished Saarinen builds, including some of Saarinen's best-known work: the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the expressionistic TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport in New York City, Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., the strictly modern John Deere Headquarters in Moline, Illinois, and the CBS Headquarters building in New York City.
Following this, Roche and Dinkeloo's first major commission was the Oakland Museum of California, a complex for the art, natural history, and cultural history of California with a design featuring interrelated terraces and roof gardens. The city was planning a monumental building to house natural history, technology, and art, and Roche provided a unique concept: a building that is a series of low-level concrete structures covering a four block area, on three levels, the terrace of each level forming the roof of the one below, i.e. a museum (in three sections) with a park on its roof. This kind of innovative solution went on to become Roche's trademark.
This project was followed by the equally highly acclaimed Ford Foundation Building in New York City, considered the first large-scale architectural building in the U.S. to devote a substantial portion of its space to horticultural pursuits. Its famous atrium was designed with the notion of having urban green-space accessible to all and is an early example of the application of environmental psychology in architecture. The building was recognized in 1968 by Architectural Record as "a new kind of urban space".
The acclaim that greeted the Oakland Museum and Ford Foundation earned Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates a ranking at the top of their profession. Shortly afterward they began a 40-year association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, for which they did extensive remodeling and built many extensions to house new galleries including the one containing the Egyptian Temple of Dendur. Other high-profile commissions for the firm came from clients as varied as Wesleyan University, the United Nations, Cummins Engines, Union Carbide, The United States Post Office, and the Knights of Columbus.
In 1982, Kevin Roche became one of the first recipients of the Pritzker Prize, generally regarded as architecture's equivalent to the Nobel prize. Following this accolade, Roche's practice went global, receiving commissions for buildings in Paris, Madrid, Singapore, and Tokyo. He completed his first and only Irish project, The Convention Centre Dublin, in 2010.
Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates has designed numerous corporate headquarters, office buildings, banks, museums, art centers, and even part of the Bronx Zoo. Roche served as a trustee of the American Academy in Rome, president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a member of the National Academy of Design, and a member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
Roche died on March 1, 2019, at his home in Guilford, Connecticut, aged 96.
The work of Kevin Roche has been the subject of special exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Architectural Association of Ireland in Dublin, and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. A 2012 exhibition, Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment, opened at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven, Connecticut, and has been viewed at The Museum of the City of New York, the Building Museum in Washington, and the University of Toronto.
In addition to the Pritzker Prize, Roche was the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal Award for Architecture, and the French Academie d'Architecture Grand Gold Medal.
A feature documentary called Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect was released in 2017. It was directed by Irish filmmaker (and former architecture student) Mark Noonan.
Roche was the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including:
Honorary Degrees: