Rose earned degrees in architecture at Princeton University and Harvard's Graduate School of Design, studying under Michael Graves and Rafael Moneo.

After Harvard, Rose worked with landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, an experience that influenced his design philosophy of architecture that "sees the site.

Two early projects that established Rose's reputation for buildings that "see the site" are the Leeper Studio Complex at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla. (1997), and Camp Paint Rock (2000) in Hyattville, Wyo.

After completing Camp Paint Rock, for underprivileged Los Angeles teens, Rose received several commissions: including a commercial project in 1997 for Gemini Consulting to design an "office of the future" which was noted by an award from Architectural Record;[3][irrelevant citation] Gulf Coast Museum of Art (Largo, Fl., 2001); the United States Port of Entry in Del Rio, Texas, and the Currier Center for the Performing Arts at The Putney School (Putney, Vt., 2004).

(a second project for Brandeis, after the 65,000 square foot Carl and Ruth Shapiro Campus Center, which opened in 2002)[5] and the Jean Vollum Drawing, Painting, and Photography Building at Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland.

The project, funded in part by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is the state's first zero-net-energy transit center and will serve as an office, bus station, and train depot on the upgraded "Knowledge Corridor" rail line that goes from Connecticut through Massachusetts to Vermont.