About this talk

Running time: 37 minutes

Born in Dublin in 1922, Kevin Roche crossed the Atlantic to study under Mies van der Rohe at Illinois Institute of Technology, before taking a job in Eero Saarinen's (see Wright Started It, Corbu Gave It Form, Mies Added Control) office. When Saarinen died suddenly on the operating table in 1961, he joined forces with colleague John Dinkeloo to take over the practice, and complete Saarinen's unfinished projects, which included Dulles Airport and the St. Louis Arch. The pair changed their name to Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo & Associates in 1966, and in 1982 Roche was awarded the Pritzker Prize.

In this talk Roche takes a retrospective look back over his career. He compares the different methodological approaches of Mies and Saarinen; the upheaval following Saarinen's early death; his own breakthrough projects for the Oakland Museum of California, The Knights of Columbus in New Haven and The Ford Foundation in New York; his resistance to shifting fashions in architecture; and his ongoing work at the Metropolitan Museum, New York.

Roche also spoke to us in 1984 in Making Statements For History.