Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment

by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen Pritzker Prize-winner Kevin Roche (b. 1922) is one of the most critically acclaimed architects of the postwar era, distinguished for the pioneering urban structures he designed in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Oakland Museum of California and the Ford Foundation Headquarters in New York. In a career that has spanned more than half a century, Roche has pioneered new territories in design methodology, building technology, and environmentalism. A student of Mies van der Rohe’s and a principal design associate of Eero Saarinen’s in the 1950s, Roche is the leading member of the third generation of modern architects. One of his most important contributions has been to perceive architecture as part of the larger man-made environment, which entailed understanding transportation, infrastructure, and landscape as architectural problems; considering public spaces, including gardens, as integral to architecture; and designing some of the earliest energy-efficient buil