Bruce Goff
Bruce Alonzo Goff (June 8, 1904 – August 4, 1982) was an American architect, distinguished by his organic, eclectic, and often flamboyant designs for houses and other buildings in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
A 1951 Life magazine article stated that Goff was "one of the few US architects whom Frank Lloyd Wright considers creative...scorns houses that are ‘boxes with little holes.
[2] Life was very difficult for the Goffs in Alton, so they moved south to Indian Territory and lived on land that would become Tulsa, Oklahoma.
He started school in Skiatook, where he was fascinated by a picture of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, his first real exposure to architecture other than frontier structures.
He enrolled in the sixth grade at Lincoln Elementary School, where his first art teacher, a Miss Brown, strongly supported his individualistic artistic expression.
After graduating in September, he was promoted to Chief Petty Officer (CPO) and posted to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, where he spent 18 months.
[7] In March 1944, Goff was ordered to report to Camp Parks, a naval complex in Dublin, California, east of Oakland, for rehabilitation and reassignment (R & R).
Captain James Wilson, Chief Engineering Officer of the base, assigned CPO Goff the job of designing all of the projects.
In his private practice, Goff built a large number of residences in the American Midwest, developing his singular style of organic architecture that was client- and site-specific.
[21] Goff relocated his studio to the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, which had been designed by his mentor Frank Lloyd Wright.
Finding inspiration in sources as varied as Antoni Gaudi, Balinese music, Claude Debussy, Japanese ukiyo-e prints, and seashells, Goff's mature work had no precedent and he has few heirs other than his former assistant, New Mexico architect Bart Prince, and former student, Herb Greene.
Goff's idiosyncratic floorplans, attention to spatial effect, and use of recycled and/or unconventional materials such as gilded zebrawood, cellophane strips, cake pans, glass cullet, Quonset Hut ribs, ashtrays, and white turkey feathers, challenge conventional distinctions between order and disorder.
A 2019 feature-length documentary, Goff,[27] was directed by Britni Harris and featured a comprehensive review of the architect's life and work as well as interviews with former colleagues, students and patrons.
His extant archive—including architectural drawings, paintings, musical compositions, photographs, project files, and personal and professional papers—is held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago.
[32] His cremated remains are interred in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, with a marker designed by Grant Gustafson, one of Goff's students, which incorporates a glass cullet fragment salvaged from the ruins of the Joe D. Price House and Studio.
