The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) awarded an Honorable Mention for the 2022 SAH Exhibition Catalogue Award to Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture. The Renegades book accompanied the “Renegades” exhibition held at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Spring 2020. The award was presented by Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), during the SAH Annual International Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 28, 2022. To view a video of the awards presentation, click here.
Every year, SAH presents publications awards to recognize the most distinguished publications in architectural history, urban history, landscape history, preservation, and architectural exhibition catalogues. The SAH Exhibition Catalogue Award recognized publications that accompany architectural history exhibitions. The Society writes, “Their catalogues have become distinctive vehicles for the expression of scholarship in architectural history. They remain as the substantial and enduring contribution after the life of the exhibition is spent.”
Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture was edited by Luca Guido, Stephanie Pilat, and Angela Person, all Architecture faculty of Gibbs College of Architecture. Created to accompany the “Renegades” exhibition hosted by the Christopher C. Gibbs College of Architecture at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, the publication explores the fraught history of this distinctively American movement born on the Oklahoma prairie. The catalogue features essays by leading scholars and includes a wide range of images, including rare, never-before-published sketches and models. It fully captures the essence and conveys the importance of the American School of Architecture, an approach to design that was developed and fostered at the University of Oklahoma under the leadership of Bruce Goff, Herb Greene, Mendel Glickman, and others during the 1950s and 1960s.
The SAH award committee was made up of Carolyn Yerkes (chair), Laura Moretti, Bryan Clark Green. The committee commented:
"Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture advances the thesis that as chairman of the School of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma during the postwar decades, Bruce Goff created a distinct and influential approach to design that reverberated throughout the next half-century of American architecture. The catalogue, which accompanies an exhibition held at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in spring 2020, argues that the pedagogy Goff and his colleagues promoted, as well as the projects that they and their students went on to construct, constitutes an “American School” of architecture, rooted in a specific time and place, and decidedly anti-East Coast in its outlook. Handsomely produced, the catalogue introduces the reader to a range of student work and built projects, with a series of linked thematic essays that situate Goff and his associates within the history of American architecture."
The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH) was founded at Harvard University in 1940. SAH is a nonprofit membership organization that serves a network of local, national, and international institutions and individuals who focus on the history of the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life. The Society promotes the study, interpretation, and conservation of architecture, design, landscapes, and urbanism worldwide for the benefit of all.
Renegades has also been recognized with a 2021 Oklahoma Book Award for Design, and it was a finalist for the 2021 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award organized by the College Art Association.
Learn more about the American School and explore the publications and exhibitions that feature its legacy. To purchase Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture, visit the OU Press website.
Petya Stefanoff, Chair of the Educational Committee with the American Planning Association, Oklahoma Chapter (APA-OK) and Gibbs College PhD candidate, has developed a new training program for local government officials. The program, focused on land use, zoning principles, and land development, recently certified its first graduates with Certified Citizen Planner status.
Gibbs Construction Science and Architecture students recently traveled to Dublin, Ireland, to compete in the Associated Schools of Construction (ASC) Region 8 Student Competition. The team partnered with Czech Technical University and secured third place in the Design-Build category.
Gibbs College is pleased to present the exhibition Vollendorf in Oklahoma: The Architecture of Dean Bryant Vollendorf during the Spring 2026 semester. It will be on display in Gould Hall, on the OU-Norman Campus, from February 16, 2026 - March 13, 2026.
