GOFF: CHICAGO SCREENING + TALK
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
6–8 PM | UIC School of Architecture, Room 1100 A+DS
Bruce Goff was one of the greatest American architects of the twentieth century. His unconventional perspective challenged stigmas about the Midwest’s inability to produce innovative work. A peer of Frank Lloyd Wright, his work had a profound influence on the next generation of architects, including Phillip Johnson and Frank Gehry. However, Goff’s willingness to explore unprecedented forms often solicited polarized perspectives of his work. As a result of establishing his practice in an otherwise conservative landscape and his unabashed desire to experiment with the possibilities of form, much of his work has been left to decay or forgotten altogether.
GOFF, directed by Britni Harris and produced by Harris and Michelle Svenson, explores the life of Goff, an iconoclast, one of the most innovative yet forgotten American architects of the twentieth century, and chronicles the events that lead to the destruction and renewed interest in his memory and dwellings.
Introduction by Art Institute curator Craig Lee followed by a Q&A with film director Britni Harris, professor Penelope Dean, and Art Institute curator Alison Fisher, moderated by Karl Jones.
This event is organized by the UIC School of Architecture, MAS Context, and Tulsa Artist Fellowship.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
MAS Context shares ideas and facilitates discourse about urban design and the built environment. Founded in 2009, we are a nonprofit organization based in Chicago, but our reach is global. Our approach is multidisciplinary and collaborative; we strive to be an inclusive community of creative thinkers across disciplines who are interested in the future of cities.
The School of Architecture at UIC promotes architecture as a cultural practice of organizing information, of intelligently identifying and deploying patterns—conceptual, visual, structural, behavioral, and material—in the world. The program prepares its graduates to project all scales of these spatial and organizational patterns through the systematic development of an aesthetic attitude, a technical confidence, and a theoretical opportunism. The School recognizes its primary mission to prepare graduates to think, negotiate, and collaborate through all genres of design; to direct diverse project teams; and to generate design artifacts and arguments with a contemporary cultural and disciplinary resonance.
Established in 2015, Tulsa Artist Fellowship was created as a place-based initiative by the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) that addresses pressing challenges faced by contemporary artists and arts workers living in and joining Tulsa, Oklahoma.