Kevin Roche : Architecture as Environment

Pritzker Prize--winning architect Kevin Roche (b. 1922) is best known for the large, bold urban structures he designed in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Oakland Museum of California and the Ford Foundation Headquarters in New York. Roche is also responsible for the master plans of major universities and museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Central Park Zoo. He is among the 20th century's most successful corporate architects, receiving commissions for more than thirty-eight headquarters for such companies as Aetna, Conoco, General Foods, John Deere, Merck, and Union Carbide. A student of Mies van der Rohe and principal design associate of Eero Saarinen, Roche is the leading member of the third generation of modern architects. One of his most important contributions has been to see architecture as a part of the larger man-made environment, which involved understanding transportation, infrastructure, and landscape as architectural issues. This book draws on previously inaccessible archival materials and unpublished interviews to present the full range of Roche's career and place his innovative work within the larger context of modern architecture.

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen is associate professor at the Yale School of Architecture. She is author of Alvar Aalto: Architecture, Modernity, and Geopolitics (Yale), and co-editor of Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale).