In 1982, Irish-American architect Kevin Roche was awarded the Pritzker Prize; now, 40 years later and three years after Roche’s passing in 2019, the celebrated architect’s surviving family is reallocating Roche’s award to launch a scholarship program to support the next generation of architects. The prize money and the sale of a Henry Moore sculpture, from Roche’s private collection, helped the family secure the $150,000 for the Jane & Kevin Roche Scholarship Fund, which is named after the celebrated architect and his wife, who he met while working at Eero Saarinen and Associates.
The scholarship was established through partnership with the Connecticut Architecture Foundation (CAF), an organization dedicated to providing education and research funding to individuals studying architecture that since 1986 has awarded over $600,000 in scholarships. Roche lived in Connecticut for part of his life.
Starting in 2023, the Jane & Kevin Roche Scholarship Fund will award money to architecture students who have completed two years in accredited undergraduate architecture programs or have been accepted into accredited graduate programs.
“The Roche family’s creation of this scholarship fund in celebration of their parents’ significant architectural contributions is commendable,” said Jay Brotman, a longtime board member of CAF, “His passing in 2019 reminds us of the power of exceptional architecture and the importance of supporting new talent in the field.”
The launch of the scholarship program was celebrated earlier this year in late April at an event held at the Yale School of Architecture (YSoA). The programming was largely devoted to remembering Roche’s legacy—the architect would have turned 100 years old this year. Speakers at the event were YSoA faculty members including dean Deborah Berke and Senior Critic Brennan Buck, who discussed the societal impact of Roche’s work.
The ceremony also showed a video remembrance of Roche by 2020 Pritzker laureates Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects (who like Roche also hail from Dublin, Ireland). The video featured a conversation moderated by renowned architecture critic Cynthia Davidson, who discussed Roche’s legacy with the two Irish architects, including his projects the recently-renovated Oakland Museum and Ford Foundation. Located in Midtown Manhattan, the Ford Foundation Building stands between 42nd and 43rd Street, just one street block away from another one of the architect’s spectacular glass buildings, One United Nations Plaza; these are two of the many buildings exemplifying Roche’s deftness in making bold modernism elegant–a a quality that he was remembered for. Now, with the launch of the Roche Scholarship fund, the late architect’s legacy lives on not only in his buildings, but also in the support of the next generation of architects.
“I can’t think of a better way to honor his legacy of exceptional architecture and the advancement of promising future architects than by supporting the scholarship dedicated to his ideals,” said Stephanie Degen-Monroe, President of CAF.
