This house was designed by the architect Bruce Goff and was located in Norman, OK. There was one tall mast in the center of a spiraling wall of iron rock and aqua colored glass slabs. I was a freshman in college when there was an exhibit of Goff's work at the Fred Jones Art Museum that I went to. Architecture had always inspired me and was an interest of mine. His work is described as organic and playful, which one could see here.
As my mom and I drove to the Bavinger house, I couldn't believe this piece of work was right in our neighborhood and had been under my nose for fifteen years. It was a gray day and Bruce Goff's son greeted us and led the tour. As we walked up the stairs, there were pools of water and ceramic brown paper bags decorating the floors. The house was built like a sea shell, and as you wound up the steps, the perimeter became smaller and smaller. At the top there was a rope zip line that once stretched out into the woods.
My mom loved it. She is an artist, and she expressed that their son must have loved living there and how he was so lucky to have grown up there. I could tell by his reactions that he didn't agree, and I understood how he felt. It's a lovely structure to tour, but it would be hard to live there and have parents with radically different constitutions then his own. To hear person after person rave about the house could wear you down after so many years of leading tours of something unbearably personal.
Well, unfortunately or not, this man ended up blowing the Bavinger house up. I don't know exactly why, but I could see it as being an expression of his long standing frustration. I am glad that I got to see the house in person, and I can understand my mom's opinion of what a shame it was to lose it. However, this wasn't a commercial building. It was a home, it belonged to their family, and you can't see what goes on behind closed doors. Dynamite released the iron rock that was used in its construction, and it ultimately deconstructed it.
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