KLUVER, Roland

(1931-2023) Roland Kluver left this earth peacefully on December 22, 2023. He was 92.

Roland was an architect, builder, musician, teller of jokes and beloved husband, father, grandfather and greatgrandfather.

Roland grew up on a farm in North Platte, Nebraska. As a teenager, Roland was influenced by a co-op student from Antioch College who was working on a Rural Electrification Program. Roland decided to head to Yellow Springs, Ohio to study engineering at Antioch. In his senior year at Antioch, Roland met Susan Edelstein. They fell in love and later married at the Friends Meeting House in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Roland was studying architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

After graduating from Harvard in 1959, Roland joined The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a firm founded in 1945 by Walter Gropius and a small group of young architects. His first job at TAC was to work on buildings at the University of Baghdad in Iraq. He became a director in 1978, and worked at TAC for 38 years. Among the many scientific, health and governmental buildings that Roland managed, he was particularly glad to contribute to the Boston architectural scene with projects at Childrens’ Hospital and the JFK Federal Office Building. In 1976, Roland opened a new TAC office in Kuwait, where he participated in the design and construction of scientific buildings throughout the Middle East. In 1987, Roland left TAC to become President of Tobishima Associates, in New York. Upon his return from New York in 1992, he oversaw the construction of the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston. In his own words, Roland was first an engineer and builder, and second a designer. He was a modernist, valuing function over form. Never a fan of “tour de force” architecture, he instead gravitated to the challenge of designing highly functional buildings that met the needs of complex users, such as hospitals and universities.

In 1973, Roland was able to connect with his farming boyhood, when he and Susan bought an old farm property in Chilmark, Massachusetts. Restoring that 1830s farmhouse and barn became a passion that filled his days for decades. Chilmark eventually became their true home, where they made great friends and joined the island community they loved. In Chilmark, Roland worked as an owner’s representative, managing construction on several island homes. He also served on the Chilmark Affordable Housing Committee.

Roland leaves his wife, Susan; sisters, Bea and Mary; daughters,

Sarah and Jean; grandchildren, Dario and Sianni; great-grandson, Zuli; and many beloved in-laws and nephews and nieces and cousins.

We will remember him in his overalls, blue eyes shining and white hair blowing, riding his vintage John Deere tractor over the meadow on Middle Road.