Roche Wins Architects’ Gold Medal

WASHINGTON — Kevin Roche, the Irish-born designer of such landmarks as California’s Oakland Museum and the Ford Foundation headquarters in New York, has been named the winner of the 1993 American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal.

Roche, 70, joins such other famous architects as Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Tange Kenzo and Buckminster Fuller in receiving the medal, one of architecture’s highest honors.

After studying in Illinois, Roche joined the late Eero Saarinen and helped design such well-known projects as the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the TWA building at New York’s Kennedy Airport and Deer & Co. headquarters in Illinois.

On his own, he also was the architect for the master plan for the Central Park Zoo in New York and the Nations Bank Plaza in Atlanta.