Curator

  • Art Institute Chicago
  • Harvard art museum
  • My Exhibition
Ruth and Sam Ford House, Aurora, Illinois, Elevation Showing Wall

Ruth and Sam Ford House, Aurora, Illinois, Elevation Showing Wall

1947–1949

Bruce Alonzo Goff American, 1904–1982

Aurora

Bruce Goff designed buildings for the Navy during World War II and became acquainted with the versatile Quonset hut, a demountable steel structure with a distinctive half-tube shape. This experience fueled Goff’s increasingly experimental approach to architecture after the war. When asked to create a home for the director of an arts school in Aurora, Illinois, Goff returned to the Quonset hut, whose semicircular ribs created an opportunity for spatial play. Military materials found their way into other parts of the rounded structure as well—including army surplus rope in the ceilings and aircraft domes repurposed as skylights— creating a kind of postwar fantasy far removed from the formulaic ranch houses being built across the Chicago suburbs.

Graphite on white tracing paper

Architecture and Design