A quiet and unassuming man, Dinkeloo chose to step away from the limelight along with his equally modest partner Kevin Roche, though both had designed some of the most iconic buildings in the world.

After graduating, Dinkeloo joined the United States Navy and entered WWII, where he commissioned as a lieutenant and served in the Naval Construction Battalion otherwise known as the Seebees.

In 1950, Dinkeloo left Skidmore, Owens, & Merrill and returned to his home state where he joined Eero Saarinen and Associates in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

John Dinkeloo was head of Saarinen's Technical Department who was keenly aware of the latest innovations using avante-garde building materials from glass to the new composites.

They completed 12 major unfinished Saarinen builds, including some of Saarinen's best-known work: the Gateway Arch, the expressionistic TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport in New York City, Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC, the strictly modern John Deere Headquarters in Moline, Illinois, and the CBS Headquarters building in New York City.

[6] The acclaim that greeted the Oakland Museum and Ford Foundation earned Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates a ranking at the top of their profession.

Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates has designed numerous corporate headquarters, office buildings, banks, museums, art centers, and even part of the Bronx Zoo.

As early as general manager at Eero Saarinen's form, Dinkeloo showed intense interest in the application of glass at that time.

[14] By the time the firm was designing the John Deere Headquarters Building in Moline, Illinois, Dinkeloo was adding a bronze metal spray to the process.

One of his most significant innovations was the use of metalized, mirror-like glass in exterior walls, which deflects heat and substantially reduces air-conditioning requirements.

Also at that time (late 1950s), the space industry, and especially Bell Laboratories was using an extra thin metallized polyester film for air balloons.

[11] Dinkeloo was keen in finding ways in which "form and techniques would continue to be inseparable-where architecture, in the best modernist tradition, would draw equally from both a formal image and a technical idea.

"[2] Dinkeloo's last project was to develop a more rigid aluminum siding of flat strips for the General Foods in Rye, New York and an insurance building for the John Deere headquarters.