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


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