Kevin Roche (1922–) and John Dinkeloo (1918–81) met in 1950 when they joined the office of Eero Saarinen and Associates at Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where they worked for 11 years along with Robert Venturi, Chuck Bassett, Tony Lumsden, Gunnar Birketts, and Cesar Pelli. After Saarinen’s sudden death in 1961, Roche and Dinkeloo formed a partnership in Hamden, Connecticut, to complete the projects that were under way at that time. The nascent partnership saw not only the successful completion of ten international projects but also went on to receive many other important commissions. Roche and Dinkeloo practiced together until 1981, and during that 20-year period they designed a number of outstanding buildings for a diverse group of corporate and institutional clients.

The ten buildings that Roche and Dinkeloo inherited from Saarinen were projects that they had been centrally involved in designing and included some of the most significant American buildings of the period, sharing innovative approaches to technology and new materials: the Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri; the TWA Terminal, New York City; Dulles International Airport, Washington, D.C.; the Headquarters for John Deere and Company in Moline, Illinois; and the CBS Headquarters in New York.

The first project awarded to the new practice was the Oakland Museum (1961–68) in California. Eero Saarinen had been on the original list of architects being considered for the project, and Roche Dinkeloo, who asked to be considered after his death, was selected from a group of 35 architects. Their award-winning museum design included landscaped roofs that created a new park at the heart of the city. Over the next 20 years, the practice grew to become one of the most vital American offices of that era, designing a wide range of different building types for both civic and corporate clients.

The most significant buildings designed by Roche Dinkeloo include a series of university facilities, the office tower (1965–69) for the Knights of Columbus together with the neighboring Coliseum (1965–72) in New Haven, and arguably the most important, the Headquarters for the Ford Foundation (1963–68) in New York. These monumental buildings made innovative use of novel materials such as glass, advanced glazing systems, and self-rusting steel while at the same time exploiting the potential of structural forms as large-scale ordering systems. Projects such as the factories and offices for Cummins Engine in Darlington, England (1963–65), and later at Columbus, Indiana (1970–73), developed these ideas in ways that improved the industrial working environment, whereas a series of designs for corporate headquarters for RichardsonMerrell Inc. (1970–74), Union Carbide (1976–82), and General Foods (1977–82) explored the needs of large new office buildings sited in green-field sites by integrating offices and parking within the landscape.

In 1967, Roche Dinkeloo began work on the renovation and extension of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, a project that would extend over more than 30 years. In addition to a new gallery wing and a bookshop, a series of glassy pavilions were designed for the Robert Lehman Collection in 1974 and subsequently for the Temple of Dendur.

Since Dinkeloo’s death, Roche has directed the practice with a group of associates and continued the design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, creating new galleries and restoring the existing building. The work of Roche’s office has become increasingly preoccupied with formal issues and the development of a historicist eclecticism.

Roche and Dinkeloo were the recipients of numerous honors and awards. In 1974, they received the Architectural Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and eight years later Roche was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. In 1995, the Ford Foundation Headquarters received the AIA’s Twenty-Five-Year Award for an outstanding building of distinction.

BRIAN CARTER

14 June 1922 Born in Dublin, Ireland;

1940–45 Attended the National University of Ireland, Dublin ;

1945 bachelor’s degree in architecture ;

1945–46 and 1947– 48 Designer with Michael Scott and Partners, Dublin ;

1946 architect, the firm of Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, London ;

1948 emigrated to the United States ;

1948–49 pursued postgraduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago ;

1949 architect in the United Nations Planning Office, New York ;

1950–66 associate, Eero Saarinen and Associates, Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham, Michigan and Hamden, Connecticut ;

1954–61 principal associate in design ;.

1964 naturalized in the United States;

1968–71 Member, Board of Trustees, American Academy in Rome ;

1969–71 member, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC ;

from 1969 member, Commission of Fine Arts, Washington, DC ;

academician, National Academy of Design; member, Royal Institute of British Architects; member, Académie d’Architecture, France; member, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Italy; honorary fellow, Institute of Architects of Ireland. Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates has continued under the direction of Roche.

March 1, 2019 Died Guilford, Connecticut, USA.

Cook, John W. and Heinrich Klotz, Conversations with Architects, New York: Praeger, and London: Lund Humphries, 1973 (includes an interview with Kevin Roche)

Futagawa, Yukio, Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates, 1962–1975, Tokyo: A.D.A.Edita, and Fribourg: Office du Livre, 1975; New York: Architectural Press, 1977

Heyer, Paul, Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America, New York: Walker, 1966; London: Allen Lane, 1967; new enlarged edition, New York: Walker, 1978

Scully, Vincent, Modern Architecture, New York: Braziller, 1956; London: Prentice Hall, 1961; revised edition, New York: Braziller, 1974

Scully, Vincent, American Architecture and Urbanism, New York: Praeger, and London: Thames and Hudson, 1969; revised edition, New York: Holt, 1988

Tafuri, Manfredo and Francesco Dal Co, Architettura contemporanea, Milan: Electa, 1976; as Modern Architecture, translated by Robert Erich Wolf, New York: Abrams, 1979

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