Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment
27.09.2011 - 22.01.2012
Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street New York, NY 10029, USA
Pritzker Prize-winner Kevin Roche, one of America's most influential and prolific architects, acclaimed for his skillful integration of man-made and natural environments, will be the subject of an exhibition on view at the Museum of the City of New York September 27, 2011, through January 22, 2012. Drawing on material originally presented at the Yale School of Architecture, the exhibition has been expanded to highlight Roche's contributions to the fabric of New York City, including the Ford Foundation building and more than four decades of master planning, design, renovations, and new additions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment features original drawings, models, photographs, and ephemera documenting Roche's career, along with extensive video presentations of projects and interviews with the architect. Roche?s predominant interest in bringing together-as closely as possible-the natural and built environments is a dominant theme and overall highlight of the exhibition. A publication, funded by the Ford Foundation, entitled Kevin Roche in New York will accompany the exhibition, complementing a catalog published by Yale University Press.
Kevin Roche views New York City as an "undisguised prototype" of the world?s future.
"The nice things about New York and the evil things of New York," he has said, "will simply spread."
Exhibition Highlights
Highlights of the Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment will include:
- Roche's plan and execution (1963-1968) of the Ford Foundation headquarters, considered, when built, a "tour de -force of outside-inside space." The building, 12 stories high, comprises an L-shaped office wing within which a glass conservatory houses a garden designed by the landscape architect Dan Kiley. Floor-to-ceiling windows provide undiminished views from offices to the interior garden (which is also open to the public), generating a sense of community and shared purpose. A groundbreaking and surprising new type of building, the structure equally distributes the space for offices and gardens. Roche, working with Henry Ford, designed every aspect of the interior, including furniture, desks, tables, and more. The Ford Foundation, over the years, has been scrupulous about maintaining and restoring the many pieces designed over 50 years ago.
- Roche's work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he has designed and executed 46 different projects since 1968, working with three different directors over the course of 40 years. The projects include the Front Plaza, 1967 (85,000 sq. ft.); Great Hall restoration, 1967 (45,000 sq. ft.); Lehman Pavilion, 1975 (31,000 sq. ft.); Temple of Dendur, 1978 (35,000 sq. ft.); Egyptian Wing, 1978 (71,000 sq. ft.); Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, 1982 (109,000 sq. ft.); Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, 1987 (125,000 sq. ft.); New Japanese Galleries, 1987 (10,000 sq. ft.); New Ancient Chinese galleries, 1987 (22,000 sq. ft.) and the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, 2007 (12,400 sq.ft.). His new wings on the Central Park side of the complex recall the symmetry of the original buildings on Fifth Avenue, which were designed by Richard Morris Hunt and McKim, Mead White. Envisioning the need to accommodate some 5 million visitors each year, Roche helped the Met become one of the world's most preeminent destinations-an encyclopedic museum with conservation labs, concert hall, education facility, and retail operations stationed throughout the massive complex. The Egyptian Wing has been heralded as a new typology for exhibiting historical objects. Very importantly, Roche has designed the American Wing twice-first in 1980, and again from 2007-2009, with the renovated Engelhar Court and the period rooms; the American Paintings Gallery, now being renovated, are expected to be completed in January, 2012. The American Wing, with multi-level galleries hovering within a glass-enclosed expanse, provides an immediate connection with Central Park-an ethereal setting in which the presence of nature is keenly felt.
Commented Morrison H. Heckscher, Lawrence A. Fleischman Chairman of the American Wing, the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "It's been an extraordinary privilege and pleasure to work directly with Kevin Roche to reconfigure his 1980 American Wing for the optimal display of American Art for 21st century viewers."
Other highlights of the exhibition will include:
- Roche's plans (1969-1975) for the United Nations Plaza, one of the earliest skyscrapers to combine a variety of uses-office, hotel, a sports facility with both a swimming pool and tennis courts, and other amenities. Clad in a continuous glass curtain wall, the building's exterior seems to shimmer, reflecting the sky.
- The plan for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was designed for a small site lower Manhattan. Roche's plan called for a building that would begin 12 stories above street level on four 150-foot columns, creating a public plaza underneath. This project was not realized; the Bank purchased an existing office tower which had become available just as Roche?s planning stage was completed.
- A focus on other New York City projects including the Central Park Zoo, UNICEF
headquarters, 750 Seventh Avenue, 60 Wall Street, E.F. Hutton building, Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the Jewish Museum.
Interestingly, complex, colorful, and extremely nuanced diagrams, considered key to Roche's entire process, will be featured in the exhibition. Roche calls diagrams "machine[s] for learning and change." The diagrams on view-schematic drawings of every artifact in the Met's Egyptian Wing, for example, or thorough studies of the classical pillars of antiquity, blocks of color for carpeting or pod-like clusters of buildings throughout a project-depict vastly different types of information Roche gathers throughout a commission. Most notably, although much of this material has a "computer-generated" look, it was developed two decades prior to the advent of computer-aided design; his sleek slide presentations from the 1960?s anticipate today's ubiquitous PowerPoints.
About Kevin Roche, In Brief
Kevin Roche was born in Ireland in 1922. His father, Eamon Roche, head of the country's largest dairy cooperative, gave the young architect his first commission in 1941: a piggery to house one thousand hogs. Roche moved to America in 1948 at age 26 to study with Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He began his career as Eero Saarinen?s "right-hand man," and after Saarinen's death (1961), with John Dinkeloo, brought many of Saarinen?s projects to completion. Subsequently, the two established their own firm (1966), which they maintained until Dinkeloo's death in 1981. Today, Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Architects maintains a staff of 60 people working primarily on large-scale projects around the world.
Exhibition Credits
The exhibition Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment at the Yale University School of Architecture was the outcome of a multi-year research project directed by Yale School of
Architecture Associate Professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen. It opened at Yale in February, 2011.
Dr. Sarah Henry, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of the City of New York, is collaborating with Kyle Johnson, AIA, guest curator, on this refocused exhibition. Wendy Evans Joseph, FAIA, is the designer. Gail Johnson is the curatorial associate.
The presentation of Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment at the Museum of the City of New York is made possible by the Ford Foundation. Additional support is provided by Hugh Hardy, FAIA, Diane and James E. Quinn, Robert and Joyce Menschel Family Foundation and The Donald and Barbara Zucker Family Foundation. The exhibition was originally presented at the Yale School of Architecture. ASSA ABLOY is the lead sponsor of Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment. Additional support for the exhibition is provided by Carolyn Brody, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, and an anonymous donor. The Yale School of Architecture?s Exhibition Program is supported in part by the James Wilder Green Dean's Resource Fund, the Kibel Foundation Fund, The Nitkin Family Dean?s Discretionary Fund in Architecture, The Paul Rudolph Publication Fund, the Robert A.M. Stern Fund, and the Rutherford Trowbridge Memorial Publication Fund.
The Museum of the City of New York celebrates and interprets the city, educating the public about its distinctive character, especially its heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. Founded in 1923 as a private, non-profit corporation, the Museum connects the past, present, and future of New York City. It serves the people of New York and visitors from around the world through exhibitions, school and public programs, publications, and collections. The Museum has anchored its East Harlem neighborhood and welcomed visitors to its landmark home on Fifth Avenue?s
Museum Mile since 1932.
The Museum mounts approximately 12 special exhibitions every year. They are extraordinary in their variety and breadth of interest; subjects include design, urbanism, immigrant history, politics and public policy-and the interaction among all of these. Exhibitions that explore architecture and the built environment, such as the current American Style: Colonial Revival and the Modern Metropolis; and Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future; and America?s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York, among others, have garnered great critical acclaim from the press and public alike. |
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January 2012
