NORMAN, Okla. – You could call him a renegade of American architecture.
Oklahoman Bruce Goff created fascinating buildings in the mid-century era, such as the Bavinger House in Norman and the Shin’en Kan House in Bartlesville.
Those homes are now part of a new exhibit at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the OU campus.
‘Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture’ features Goff’s love of organic architecture, his unique teaching while at OU during the 1940’s and ’50’s, as well as the work of the students Goff inspired.
“I can confidently say that the way we teach architecture in the United States, really the worldwide over, changed in 1947 when he became chairman,” said Hanz Butzer, Dean of the OU College of Architecture and co-designer of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
“He changed the conversation from a student doing whatever the teacher said, to saying ‘I, the teacher and the architecture faculty, we’re here to serve the student and to help them get ideas out of their minds, and to really generate and foster really unique stuff that we’d never seen before,'” Butzer said of Goff.
The exhibit is free and runs through April 5th.
