Jerry Boryca, Director, New Haven, CT 2021
Our Mission
Roche Modern is a cross-disciplinary design firm blending architecture, engineering, sculpture and energy systems in pursuit of a modernist future.
A small firm with a big reach, Roche Modern dares to imagine that we can create buildings, objects and experiences worthy of our seventy-year history. We are a growing team of fourteen individuals providing full spectrum architectural services from Design through Project Completion. The majority of our current team worked closely with Kevin Roche for most of their careers. Building upon decades of teamwork, the firm has deep expertise in both design and production honed over the course of two hundred noteworthy, large scale institutional and commercial projects.
Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche, Bloomfield Hills, MI 1957
Photographed by Richard Knight
Our History
The history of Roche Modern reaches back to Eero Saarinen and Associates, which was established in 1950. After Saarinen's passing in 1961, Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo continued the firm’s leadership and relocated the firm from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to Hamden, Connecticut. Together they worked to complete the remaining design of Saarinen’s major projects including the Dulles International Airport, the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the TWA Terminal at JFK Airport as well as the CBS Headquarters in New York City.
In 1966, the firm became Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates. The firm went on to engage in major projects throughout the United States, Europe and Asia, providing master planning, architectural design, interior design, and construction administration services. In a career of over fifty years with the firm that bore his name, Kevin Roche and his team completed over two hundred projects including thirty-eight corporate headquarters, eight museums, numerous research facilities, theaters, schools, factories, performing arts centers, hotels and private residences. Notable projects include the Ford Foundation headquarters and master planning and designing the expansion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, both in New York City. The firm was the recipient of the AIA Firm Award, the highest honor bestowed on an architecture firm by the American Institute of Architects and in 1982, Kevin Roche was the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Kevin Roche continued to work at the firm up to his passing in 2019.
John Dinkeloo & Kevin Roche, New Haven, CT 1975
Photographed by Yukiko Futagawa
With a thirty-year background as a principal in several construction and development businesses in New York City, Eamon Roche joined Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates in 2018 in the role of Managing Director. Since joining the firm, Eamon has streamlined operations, brought in new clients and led the firm’s largest legacy project, the Capitol Crossing development in Washington DC, through its completion. Eamon Roche is now relaunching the seventy-year-old firm as Roche Modern from its new location in New Haven, Connecticut.
In addition to the practice of architecture, Roche Modern is also committed to concluding a multi-year archival project in which the written and drawn body of work produced by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates will join the Archives at Yale where Eero Saarinen’s papers are also housed. For information about the archives of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, please refer to our contact page.
Eamon Roche, Managing Director, New Haven, CT 2021