American architect Kevin Roche, of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, was today named the fourth annual recipient of the international Pritzker Architecture Prize, specifically created in 1979 to honor a branch of human endeavor overlooked by the Nobel Prizes. Along with the prestige of recognition, Roche receives a specially created Henry Moore sculpture and $100,000 tax-free.
In Europe, he has a number of completed projects that have won high praise from critics, including a residence in Bordeaux, France; the Educatorium, a multifunction building for Utrecht University in the Netherlands; the master plan and Grand Palais for Lille, France which is his largest realized urban planning project; and the Kunsthal, providing exhibition space, a restaurant and auditoriums in Rotterdam.
Jay A. Pritzker, president of the Hyatt Foundation that administers and funds the prize, made the announcement at a press conference at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City. He presented Roche with the check, and promised delivery of the Moore sculpture at a formal banquet planned for Chicago's Art Institute on May 19.
He also read the citation from the jury, as follows: "In this mercurial age, when our fashions swing overnight from the severe to the ornate, from contempt for the past to nostalgia for imagined times that never were, Kevin Roche's formidable body of work sometimes intersects fashion, the Robert Lehman Pavilion and the Michael C. Rockefeller Primitive Art Wing.
In California, Roche designed the innovative Oakland Museum. His arts and education projects in other parts of the country include the Denver Center for the Performing Arts; the Fine Arts Center of the University of Massachusetts; the J.M. Moudy Building for Visual Arts and Communication at Texas Christian University, Ft. Worth; and the Creative Arts Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
He has built a wide array of corporate structures, including the new buildings of the John Deere Company in Illinois; the College Life Insurance Company of America buildings in Indianapolis; Aetna Life and Casualty Computer Building in Hartford, Connecticut; the headquarters of the Cumins Engine Company in Columbus, Indiana; and Richardson-Vicks in Wilton, Connecticut. Three other major projects are nearing completion: the corporate headquarters for General Foods in Rye, New York; Conoco in Houston; and Union Carbide in Danbury, Connecticut. In New Haven, he also built the headquarters for the Knights of Columbus and the New Haven Coliseum.
Among his most recent commissions are the Central Park Zoo, announced just last week by the City of New York; and the De Witt Wallace Museum of Fine Arts in Colonial Williamsburg.