Kevin Roche, 93; award-winning architect
Kevin Roche, a Pritzker-winning architect who emerged as one of corporate America’s leading designers during the postwar boom years and became an architect of choice for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other major institutions, died March 1 at his home in Guilford, Connecticut. He was 96.
His son Eamon Roche confirmed the death but did not provide a specific cause.
The Irish-born Roche moved to the United States in 1948 and became a protege of Eero Saarinen, the Finnish American architect known for designing sculptural, futuristic buildings. For nearly a decade, he was Saarinen’s principal design associate, absorbing his expressionistic style and his philosophy that architecture should serve a higher purpose by bringing people together and helping to build a sense of community.
After Saarinen’s death in 1961, Roche and colleague John Dinkeloo spent years overseeing the completion of their employer’s unfinished work, including Dulles International Airport near Washington, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and the T.W.A. terminal at Kennedy International Airport in New York. They then went into business as Roche-Dinkeloo, keeping the name after Dinkeloo died in 1981. Their guiding principle was the reimagining of giant work spaces and museums, trying to make them more appealing to the toiling or visiting masses.
In 1965, Roche completed his first major commission: designing a home for the new Oakland Museum of California. He and Dinkeloo conceived of a plan for a three-tiered building that was stacked like a set of stairs, with each level opening up to gently sloping terraces, lawns, and trellis-clad walkways. Viewed from above, the museum itself disappears and only the geometric gardens are visible.
In 1968, Mr. Roche unveiled his design for the Ford Foundation headquarters in New York. Twelve stories of glass-walled offices look out over treetops and a lush conservatory – an indoor garden oasis in midtown Manhattan that to this day remains open to the public.
Though soaring, plantfilled atriums would eventually become a cliche, introducing a burst of greenery to a declining New York City felt bold and uncommonly generous at the time. New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable deemed the building a “splendid, shimmering Crystal Palace” and a gift to the entire city.
After creating a master plan for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1967, he spent four decades adding on new galleries, including a glass pavilion, reminiscent of an Egyptian pyramid, that houses the Temple of Dendur.
Other wings of the Met were renovated to provide better traffic flow for the rapidly growing crowds.
In the parts of the museum that Roche overhauled, massive skylights bathe the artwork with natural light, and sloping glass walls allow visitors to look directly out to Central Park. The lines are crisp and modern, contrasting