Half biopic, half career showcase, Mark Noonan’s film The Quiet Architect is a warm commemoration for an architect trusted and admired by peers and clients alike.
Half biopic, half career showcase, Mark Noonan’s film The Quiet Architect is a warm commemoration for an architect trusted and admired by peers and clients alike.
We meet the Irish-American Pritzer Prize winner Kevin Roche at age 95, still the head of his firm Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates LLC. Since Roche’s first project, a piggery for his father in rural Ireland, he has been responsible for over 200 built projects in both the U.S. and abroad. Showing no sign of yielding to age, Roche insists that the only way to stay sane is to work. Despite a lifetime of acclaimed work including The Pyramids and The Met in New York, Roche has little interest in celebrity and vehemently rejects the label of ‘starchitect’.
The Quiet Architect Trailer from Still Films on Vimeo.
Director Mark Noonan profiles Kevin Roche in The Quiet Architect , flicking between carefully captured, sun-dappled tours of his architectural feats and affirming, anecdotal interviews with those who know him best. It is through the execution of these lovingly-lensed visuals and warmth that we begin to understand the process, philosophy and work ethic of Roche.
Roche’s work is renowned for being human-oriented. He emphasized the importance of creating buildings and environments that serve the people who inhabit them before serving anybody’s ego. Throughout the film he is described by his peers as a consummate problem solver, a relentlessly dedicated and a humble thinker who’s always seen life and work as inextricable. In this way, he is an aspirational figure to those who both live and breathe architecture.
Most central to his philosophy is the nonsensical, but incredibly important idea to reflect back on – that architecture is design for people.
“I still don’t think architecture pays enough attention to the user, to the person who has to live in the building,” he says. “They don’t get nearly enough consideration. Because they’re the person who has to live or work in or worship in or whatever in the building. Architects don’t always take into account how people find their way around, or how a building fits into environment, or how it can make people happy.
“You must try to do something that really works for the people who are going to be in the building, and for the community who are going to have to live around it.”
A love letter to architecture and a meditation on the human condition, Noonan’s Kevin Roche: The Quiet Architect is worth a watch for all those who love design for purpose.