Kevin Roche

ILLUSTRATION BY Sam Kerr

You came to the United States from Ireland in 1948, when you were 26, choosing to study with Mies van der Rohe at the Illinois Institute of Technology after also being accepted at both Yale and Harvard. You only stayed in Illinois for a year. Why?

I ran out of money and couldn’t continue paying for school. That’s the only reason. Mies didn’t know I’d left—he had absolutely no interest.

Tell me about your first job.

I decided to come to New York because I wanted to work on the United Nations