While he designed buildings all over the world, the New York City area featured the most influential work of the late architect Kevin Roche, who passed away last Friday at age 96. We revisit how some of his most iconic structures were regarded by the architecture world when they debuted.
Ford Foundation
Completed in 1968, the Ford Foundation was the first of a whopping ten Manhattan buildings created by Kevin Roche in his 96 years. With its one-third-acre garden ensconced behind glass, the structure looked unlike any other that dotted the skyline at the time of its construction. “To the casual passer-by, the new Ford Foundation Building is enigmatic, practically invisible,” mused Jonathan Barrett in the February 1968 issue of Architectural Record. Barrett ultimately determined, “The design of the Ford Foundation, although unique, is also suggestive, and it will be interesting to see if it will have any influence on other buildings. One certainly hopes it will.”
United Nations Plaza
Roche went on to debut a trio of new buildings comprising United Nations Plaza, which served as the diplomatic hub’s first major expansion on New York City’s East Side. “The 1 and 2 United Nations Plaza towers are arguably the best glass buildings in Manhattan since the Seagram Building, and their utterly cool, self-assured abstraction set the tone for a generation of late-modern towers,” architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote in his 1987 New York Times review of the completed 1, 2, and 3 United Nations Plaza. “If there is anything that characterizes most of Kevin Roche's work more than crispness and sleekness, it is a kind of restless formal inventiveness and a tendency to seek to exploit the dramatic possibilities in any urban setting.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Throughout his career, Roche, along with partner John Dinkeloo, oversaw the master plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s grand expansion, dating back to 1967. Goldberger spoke highly of the galleries of Egyptian art and artifacts in a 1979 review: "They are absolutely first rate—as good an installation as exists anywhere in the Metropolitan Museum. The objects are clearly and intelligently displayed, with elegance yet understatement."
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