On Thursday, May 9, 2013, the Eric Arthur Gallery at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto will celebrate the opening of this exhibition featuring the work of the Pritzker Prize-winning principal of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates (KRJDA). Roche’s many famed projects include the Ford Foundation Building (1963–66), the Oakland Museum in California (1961–69), and the Union Carbide World Corporate Headquarters (1978-82) in Danbury.
The subtitle of the exhibition, “Architecture as Environment,” reflects Roche’s understanding of architecture as a part of a larger context, both human-made and natural, including symbolic systems and technological networks. For example, Roche’s Ford Foundation Building in Manhattan contains a 12-story plant-filled atrium, which was heralded as a great innovation when the building opened in 1966.
Roche’s career spans more than half a century and two continents. He was trained at University College Dublin in his native Ireland during the early 1940s, and at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), where he studied with Mies van der Rohe in the late 1940s. Roche is also a former design associate of Eero Saarinen.
In addition to the Pritzker Prize, which he received in 1982, Roche was the recipient of the Gold Medal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1990, and the AIA Gold Medal in 1993.
The exhibition is curated by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and organized by 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 The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Carolyn Brody, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, and an anonymous donor.
The opening runs from 5:00pm to 8:30pm at the Eric Arthur Gallery, located at 230 College Street in Toronto. The show ends July 6, 2013.