Do Not Try to Remember: The American School of Architecture in the Bay Area

In the mid-20th century, a group of renegade architects broke all the rules, shaping a uniquely American vision of design. Now, their work comes to life in Do Not Try to Remember: The American School of Architecture in the Bay Area, an archival exhibition opening February 20, 2025, at San Francisco’s Center for Architecture + Design.

Critics called them iconoclasts, radicals, and even outlaws. In the mid-twentieth century, a group of architecture students at the University of Oklahoma developed an unprecedented range of visionary projects. Mentored by architects Bruce Goff, Herb Greene, and others, these students were encouraged to develop their individual creativity and taught to prize originality. Known as the American School of Architecture, this program rejected European teaching styles in favor of bold originality. Instead of a singular aesthetic, it was defined by a set of shared values: pluralism, contextualism, and expression. This archival exhibition explores the work of a group of American School architects who went West and established groundbreaking practices in and around the Bay Area.

“Do not try to remember” was their only dogma. Do not burden yourself with the past. Do not attempt to copy. Invent! These architects realized hundreds of distinctive works in California. In sites from Sausalito to San Francisco to Big Sur, they found a booming postwar economy, cultural openness, and dramatic landscapes—the ideal testing grounds for an unconventional design approach born on the Prairie and nurtured on the Pacific Coast. Featured architects include Valentino Agnoli, Violeta Autumn, Robert Bowlby, Donald MacDonald, John Marsh Davis, Mickey Muennig, and Robert Overstreet.

The exhibition presents the history of this Organic Architecture and suggests these quietly radical structures still have much to teach designers, architects, and planners addressing the most pressing challenges of our time.

Key exhibition topics include:

● The American School: How did Bruce Goff’s unique pedagogy differ from contemporary architecture programs on the East Coast which seemed to churn out identical white boxes?

● Building From Site: How did California’s cultural and natural landscape influence and inspire this new generation of architects?

● Structural Expression: How did these architects work with material and structure resourcefully as poetic, expressive forces in architectural form making?

● Architecture for All: In a moment of ambivalence towards cities, how did these renegades approach urbanity and suggest its democratizing potential?

Do Not Try to Remember is curated by Marco Piscitelli, a scholar at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, with support from Stephanie Pilat, Angela Person, and a team of historians and designers from the University of Oklahoma.

 As part of ongoing research into the American School of Architecture, this research is supported by the Gibbs College of Architecture, University Libraries Special Collections, Bruce Goff Chair of Creative Architecture, and Office of the Vice President for Research and Partnerships at the University of Oklahoma.

https://centersf.org/dnttr-exhibit/