1922-2019

Master of contemporary architecture in the United States, Kevin Roche passed away on 1 March, at 96. He was born in Dublin, and graduated at the city’s university, but in 1948 he left home to study at the Illinois Institute of Technology with Mies van der Rohe, who was becoming one of the key figures of architectural pedagogy in the United States. Upon completing his academic training, Roche worked with Eero Saarinen in emblematic projects like the TWA Terminal in New York. He was principal designer at the studio until Saarinen’s death in 1961. Already on his own, Roche completed important commissions from prominent American companies, in which he developed, in his own way, the elegant language of eclectic modernity of those years, resulting in buildings like the Ford Foundation in New York, a true masterpiece combining a refined corporate style with the organicism of an exuberant interior garden with tropical species. The remaining works and projects pale in comparison to this powerful building, but this did not preclude his receiving the Pritzker Prize in 1982.