OU Alumnus Reflects on Bruce Goff’s “Spiral of Stone”

Guest Post | By Carl Siegel

For many of us in the Oklahoma architectural community, the 2016 loss of the Bavinger House was a tragedy – the destruction of a priceless piece of the architectural heritage of our state and our university. And while 2020 was a year of loss and tragedy for all of us, against the backdrop of the beginning of the pandemic last spring, I was given a priceless opportunity: to help breathe new life into the story of the Bavinger House.

When I was approached to edit Spiral of Stone: Memories of Bruce Goff and the Bavinger House (2020), I will admit that I had no special affinity for the house or for the work of Goff. I had obviously heard of Goff in my time at OU, and I had worked on The American School project for Gibbs College of Architecture, but I confess that I was never particularly interested in his work on a personal level. I knew the name William H. Wilson as a former student and friend of Goff’s and long-time professor at the College of Architecture, but I never imagined how editing and publishing his memoirs would drastically change my relationship to Goff and to the entire American School.

Spiral of Stone showed me a new side of Goff: not Goff the architect, but Goff the person. Behind the idiosyncratic and often strange designs was a man who fostered an environment of incredible kindness and loyalty with his students. In the book, we see Goff as Wilson saw him: as a mentor, as a business partner, but most importantly as a great and devout friend.

Similarly, Wilson’s words showed me that the Bavinger House was more than just, as the name of the book suggests, a spiral of stone and glass cullet. It was the result of remarkable human effort and perseverance, a testament to what even a small group of people can do when they work together towards a common goal. It’s a wonderful human story, and one that I personally needed last year as the world seemed to collapse around us.

The Bavinger House is gone, and we will always mourn that loss. My hope, however, is that Spiral of Stone has breathed some new life into its memory, and will stand as a monument to the stories of the men and women who built it.

About Carl Siegel

Carl graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BA in Architectural History and minor in Linguistics before defecting to the other side of the Red River for graduate school at UT-Austin. After college, he spent some time in New York City as an independent researcher and self-publishing consultant. At the iSchool (School of Information), Carl is focused on Archives and Digital Humanities, hoping to explore the intersection between archival methodologies and contemporary architectural practice. In his spare time, Carl enjoys watching baseball, reading about 1920s avant-garde Russian art, and feeding his mild obsession with the work of James Joyce.

About Spiral of Stone

Spiral of Stone: Memories of Bruce Goff and the Bavinger House is the work of William H. Wilson, long-time architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma. In Spiral of Stone, Wilson shares memories of his personal and professional relationship with mid-century master architect Bruce Goff, as well as memories from his experiences building Goff’s masterpiece, the Bavinger House.