Title
The Man Who Made Wildly Imaginative, Gloriously Disobedient Building
Document Type
Magazine
Publication Date
9-10-2018
Publication Title
The New York Times Style Magazine
Abstract
Aurora, ILL., 45 miles west of Chicago, lies deep in suburbia: It’s the fictional setting of “Wayne’s World” and the real-life setting of my adolescent weekends at the mall. Behind a commercial strip lined with big-box stores, among the split-levels and center-hall colonials, in the kind of neighborhood where kids run through sprinklers on summer weekends, crouches a massive mushroom-cap dome, 48 feet in diameter. Formed by bright red Quonset hut ribs and flanked by two smaller partial domes, the structure — whose windowless front is done in inky coal masonry studded with rough-hewn chunks of aquamarine glass — looks like a spaceship that’s pulled up its jet bridge. From the back, where its red exoskeleton is exposed, it resembles a birdcage. This is the Ford House, designed in 1947 by Bruce Goff, a prolific and startlingly original midcentury architect who remains, outside of design circles, largely unknown.
Disciplines
Architecture
Language
English
Repository Citation
Fortini, A.
(2018).
The Man Who Made Wildly Imaginative, Gloriously Disobedient Building.
The New York Times Style Magazine