Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen

This retrospective on the career of Kevin Roche accompanies an exhibition of the same name, held at the Yale School of Architecture, which also organized a symposium around the architect. It presents a portfolio of five decades of architectural production, but the bulk of the book is devoted to four essays on his architecture, including one by the editor that shares the subtitle of the book. Relative to Roche, the phrase "architecture as environment" makes me think of the masterful Ford Foundation in Midtown Manhattan; the atrium's modernism softened by lush landscaping is a good precedent for green architecture today, an urban greenhouse unlike any other.… (more)