The American School refers to the imaginative school of design and practice that developed under the guidance of Bruce Goff, Herb Greene and others at the University of Oklahoma in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Students were taught to look to sources beyond the accepted canon of Western architecture and to find inspiration in everyday objects, the natural landscape and the designs of Native American tribes. The results of this pedagogical experiment—the fantastic environments imagined on paper and through built works—are characterized by experimental forms, attention to context and material resourcefulness. The architects of the American School have long been characterized as renegades, iconoclasts and apostates.

Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture tells this story of dramatic change in three sections. Moving Past the Beaux-Arts and Bauhaus, the first section, highlights the evolution in American architecture schools at the time. The second section, “Do Not Try to Remember”: The American School Curriculum, showcases the curriculum and student work produced at OU as well as the work of faculty at the time. The American School Legacy, the third section, highlights the contextual, resourceful and experimental built works of American School architects around the world.

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