Bruce Goff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bruce Goff (actually Bruce Alonzo Goff ; born June 7, 1904 in Alton , Kansas , USA ; † August 4, 1982 in Tyler , Texas , USA) was an American architect .

Life

At the age of twelve, he began an apprenticeship, initially by the hour, at the architecture firm Rush, Endacott and Rush in Tulsa , Oklahoma, of which he became a partner in 1930. In 1916 or 1917 he got to know Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture , which made a deep impression on him and kept him busy all his life.

During World War II , Goff served as an architect in the US Navy . In 1947 he accepted a professorship in architecture at the University of Oklahoma . From the same year until 1955 he headed the School of Architecture there . Lecture tours have taken him to Europe and Japan. Until his death in 1982, Goff designed buildings, mainly residential houses, but also churches and, together with Bart Prince, the Shin'enKan pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art .

plant

Goff felt obliged to the ideas of an "organic architecture" as represented by Wright, but also by other architects of the "Prairie School", prominent Louis Sullivan . In contrast to the international style, organic architecture strives for a nature, location and resident-related construction method.

Over the years, Goff managed to break away from Wright's role model. He dated the beginning of his own style in 1940 when he designed the Helen Unseth House . Goff's mature architecture, despite the influence of Wright and others, has no immediate precursors. It is typical of them that they result from the local conditions, that the building is understood as a multiple articulated and broken whole, that geometric shapes such as circles and squares are often superimposed, that unusual materials found in addition to wood, natural stone and steel are used, right up to to chunks of coal and the wings of an airplane, and facades richly decorated.

effect

In the American architecture of his time, Goff was a hostile outsider; the architect Louis Kahn said of him: “Someone is working with Coke bottles and buffer carriers from locomotives.” Goff, on the other hand, found support among the residents of his houses. Ruth and Sam Ford, first owners of Ford House (1947), put up the sign in their front yard: "We don't like your house either."

It was only after his death that Goff was honored. The University of Oklahoma commemorates the architect with a Bruce Goff professorship. His work is increasingly discussed under the aspect of " queer architecture". This does not only mean that Goff was homosexual, but also that he designed his buildings as places of retreat and fantasy that were only partially visible.

The filmmaker and artist Heinz Emigholz shows in his film Goff in the Desert (2002/2003) with 62 buildings almost the entire preserved work of the architect, from the George Way House (1922/23) to the Al Struckus House (1979). Goff's grave in Graceland Cemetery , Chicago (with a striking memorial stone by Grant Gustafson ) can be seen in a sequence from Emigholz's film Miscellanea III (1997/2004).

Buildings (selection)

  • 1926: Boston Avenue Methodist Church . Tulsa, Oklahoma (decorations by Adah Robinson)
  • 1938: Turzak House . Chicago , Illinois
  • 1940: Unseth House . Park Ridge, Chicago, Illinois
  • 1947: Ledbetter House . Norman, Oklahoma
  • 1947: Ford House . Aurora, Illinois
  • 1950: Bavinger House . Norman, Oklahoma
  • 1955: Frank House . Sapulpa, Oklahoma
  • 1970: Glen Harder House . Mountain Lake , Minnesota
  • 1978–1988: Shin'enKan , Japanese pavilion in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (with Bart Prince)

literature

  • Takenobu Mohri: Bruce Goff in Architecture . Tokyo 1970
  • Ulrich Conrads and Hans G. Sperlich: Fantastic architecture . Stuttgart 1983
  • AA. L'architecture d'aujourd'hui , 227/1983 (special issue 'Bruce Goff')
  • David G. DeLong: Bruce Goff. Toward Absolute Architecture . New York 1988
  • Pauline Saliga and Mary Woolever (eds.): The Architecture of Bruce Goff. 1904-1982. Munich, New York 1995
  • Goff on Goff. Conversations and Lectures . Edited by Philip B. Welch. Norman and London 1996
  • Bauwelt , 37/2004, special issue Paths to Goff

Web links

Commons : Bruce Goff  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Arn Henderson: (Article Bruce Alonzo Goff), Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture ( Memento of the original from July 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / digital.library.okstate.edu
  2. ↑ Goff on Goff. Conversations and Lectures . Ed. V. Philip B. Welch. Norman and London 1996, p. 17.
  3. ↑ On the terms "Prairie Style" and "Prairie School", see Patrick F. Cannon: Hometown Architect. The Complete Buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park and River Forest, Illinois . Petaluna CA 2006, p. 7.
  4. ^ Goff on Goff , p. 27.
  5. ^ Ada Louise Huxtable: Peacock Feathers and Pink Plastic. In: The New York Times. February 8, 1970.
  6. ↑ Bart Prince: Goff at work. Downtown Tulsa to the Bavinger House. In: Bauwelt. 37/2004, pp. 18–23, here p. 21.
  7. ^ David G. De Long: Goff and Chiaroscuro. A summer in Tyler. In: Bauwelt , 37/2004, pp. 38–43, here p. 38.
  8. ↑ Bauwelt , 37/2004, p. 26.
  9. ^ According to the architect Robert MacNeill in an interview with Art in the Present , November 18, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Goff, Bruce
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goff, Bruce Alonzo (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American architect
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Alton , Kansas , USA
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1982
Place of death Tyler , Texas , USA