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Introduction: Bruce Goff¡¦s working career spanned sixty-six years, from
1916, when he began working in an architect¡¦s office, until his death in 1982.
During that time he received more than 450 commissions for buildings and related
designs, resulting in more than 500 proposals of which at least 147 were
realized. Bruce Goff occupied a unique place in American architecture. His
buildings looked like those of no other architect.
His idiosyncratic designs
juxtaposed shapes in unexpected but delightful combinations. His reliance on
unusual materials resulted in strange, sometimes futuristic combinations of
colors and textures. His interior designs were resolutely unconventional and
were intended to provide both physical comfort and spiritual sustenance.
His
goal was to design for the ¡¥continuous present¡¦ without referring specifically
to the past, present, or future. Working on this ideal plane, Goff continually
found new and surprising ways to satisfy the functional demands of a project.
The distinctiveness of Goff's designs could be ascribed in large part to his
determination not to be bound by previous approaches to architecture, to his
total commitment to his clients' desires, and to his ceaseless search for
inspiration in music, painting, and literature.
Unlike many of his fellow
architects, Bruce Goff did not seek to provide historians with a cohesive body
of work in any conventional fashion. Goff worked his entire life to free
architecture from the indolent idioms of the past and to show by his own example
that there were many extraordinary possibilities for innovation in the world.
No
two of his buildings looked the same, and this seemed to have been his goal; his
maxim of ¡¥beginning again and again¡¦ did not lend itself to the inbred
refinement of style practiced by most of his contemporaries. In describing his
approach to architecture, he said, ¡§Each time we do a building it should be the
first and the last.
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