What designers can learn about creativity from an oddball architecture school in 1950s Oklahoma

After World War II, architecture underwent a transformation. The built environment had been revamped by the ascension of modernism; classical columns and Beaux Arts beauty made way for inventive machine-age Bauhaus visions. The crisp, contemporary style of modernist homes and glass-clad skyscrapers were a revelation.

And then, there was the work coming out of the lesser known American School of Architecture at Oklahoma University, which beginning in 1947 was led by the eccentric Bruce Goff, an early pioneer and promoter of a more site-specific, ecologically minded design process. He developed a singular body of work. He designed single-family homes adorned with colorful collages of everyday objects like ashtrays, or spacecraft-shaped Midwestern homes that led owners to post signs that said “we don’t like your house either.” This vision was reflected in a teaching style that favored support over critiques and a kind of cross-cultural collaboration that was before its time. 

“Goff told his students, ‘do not try to remember,’” says Angela Person, a University of Oklahoma architecture professor who co-curated a new exhibit about the school called Outré West: The American School of Architecture from Oklahoma to California. “They had viewed slides and images of global architecture and Native American design, but when they sat down to do their own work, he wanted them to ground their own work in the people, place, time, material, and spirit of the exact project.”

The American School showcased a road much less taken in midcentury architecture. Today, when so much new design seems spat out of the same computer design programs and all of a similar stylistic bent, the work of Goff, his fellow teachers, and students offers an object lesson of a more personal, creative approach. 

“The Bauhaus pedagogy, they were training line cooks,” says Stephanie Pilat, another OU architecture professor. “Goff was training chefs.” 

A different approach

At a time when modernist architecture, and education, tended toward universal solutions, Goff’s students all took wildly divergent paths. Person attributes that in part to a more supportive creative environment. Her deep dive into the letters and archives of students revealed that many found the real world of client work much more challenging, because of the caring environment at OU that incubated their careers. 

Back in the mid-’50s, this kind of teaching included extensive hands-on work, including helping to construct Goff’s own residential commissions. Goff also had them do an exercise called orchestration of materials; Pilat compared the sketching lesson, which asked aspiring architects to quickly draw a site-specific design using a changing array of materials—like the cooking show Chopped but with concrete, copper, and glass. It was, as the exhibit name suggests, a bit outre; Friday night music listening sessions would often focus on meditating to the sounds of composers like Debussy. But the approach did get a celebrity sign-off; Frank Lloyd Wright would tell his own students to go to OU if they wanted an accredited architecture degree. 

Goff, as well as his fellow faculty like Herb Greene, brought in other teachers to help support a more creative vision of design and realize his student’s most ambitious ideas. For instance, he recruited Mendel Glickman, engineer on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim project, to help students figure out their most challenging concepts. Elizabeth Bauer Mock, who worked at MoMA showcasing the latest in modern architecture, helped students see a more global design landscape. Much of what Goff and others did may seem more de rigueur today. But his more open-ended, supportive vision was radical for its time, and still stands out in contemporary design education. 

A new California vernacular

Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the time period, OU’s unusual educational approach led to a number of graduates migrating west to California: Peruvian-born architect Violeta Autumn, who designed the stunning Cliff Residence that drapes a hillside in Sausalito, California; John Marsh Davis, who’s organic style graces homes and wineries in Northern California; and Donald MacDonald, a multifaceted designers in the Bay Area who would not only design his own version of tiny homes for the unhoused in the ‘80s, but go on to become a bridge architect who sketched out the section of the Bay Bridge found on the Golden State Warriors logo.

The American School during this unique heyday wouldn’t last; Goff left in 1955 (many posit he was pushed aside for being gay, though the university has found archival records that support their claim he was not forced out). But the legacy of this adventurous department, as detailed in the new exhibition, still has lessons to teach, and an alternate vision for design to showcase.

“I believe we now understand the damage that the International Style has done to our built environment,” says Pilat. “If you drive through freeways in Miami and Minneapolis, it looks the same. And that is partly because all these American architecture schools were teaching students to design modernist buildings that could go anywhere and serve anyone. There was a reason for that, but we now see the problems with that approach.”