Kevin Kieran, architect, teacher and consultant to the Arts Council, died on December 24th, 1999 at the age of 45.
He made his entrance to UCD's Earlsfort Terrace in the early 1970s already set in his ways, like a 19th century character not fully acclimatised to 20th century life. His knowledge of Dublin's architecture and his powers of observation were extraordinary.
He was an early enthusiast for the Venetian Gothic brilliance of Benjamin Woodward's buildings. His later writings on the significance of structure and construction in the architecture of Louis Kahn and Frank Lloyd Wright were grounded in his reading of 19th-century theorists. Exquisitely detailed pencil drawings were produced erratically, and with no regard for college timetables. He was a notorious prevaricator apparently allergic to deadlines, a perfectionist who could never convince himself that a thing could be finished while there was still a chance to start it again.
Graduating from UCD School of Architecture in 1977, he spent most of the next 20 years in the US, working as an architect in New York, studying and then teaching at Harvard Graduate School of Design where eventually he was appointed Director of Studies. He left Harvard to join the Benedictine Order in New Hampshire and then left the monastery to go back to teaching architecture. In 1997 he returned to Dublin to become the first architecture consultant to the Arts Council and to take up a teaching position at UCD. His intellectual contribution has made a lasting impression in both institutions and his international reputation as a critic kept him in demand in architectural education and publications world-wide.
A number of frustrations make it hard to accept his early death. Devoted to his family and many friends around the world he never found a life's companion. A gifted architect, he built only one building - a beautiful kindergarten in Rhode Island. More fluent in discussion than in print, he had not written the book of essays that he had long planned to do.
Loved and admired by students and colleagues, his extraordinary teaching abilities had not yet earned him the academic position he deserved. And yet this was also the nature of the man, his vital quality was registered by everyone with whom he came in contact.
The youngest of five children he is survived by his mother Kitty, his sister Ann, and brothers John, Denis and Peter.
Kevin Kieran: born 1954; died December, 1999