A spiraling 1955 house that was considered one of the icons of 20th-century organic modernism has been destroyed. And not just demolished but ripped out of the ground, as Bruce Goff’s Bavinger House in Norman, Oklahoma, had been built right into the state’s red earth. Its corkscrew shape, constructed over several years with artists Nancy and Eugene Bavinger and local University of Oklahoma (OU) students, contained floors lofted on cables above a stone ground embedded with a creek. The whole structure was almost hidden by a grove of blackjack trees.

Exterior of the Bavinger House in 2009
Exterior of the Bavinger House in 2009 © Rex Brown/Flickr

On April 28, Caleb Slinkard reported for the Norman Transcript that “all that is left of the Bavinger House is an empty clearing.” According to Slinkard, the demolition was confirmed by Bill Scott, president of the Friends of Kebyar, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of organic architecture; Scott called the site where the house once stood “scorched earth.” Slinkard added that “multiple calls” to Bob Bavinger — the son of the house’s original owners and its owner at the time of demolition — “were not returned by press time.”