A month before the architect Myron Goldfinger died last yearhis wife, June Goldfinger, asked a question she had never asked in their six decades of personal and professional partnership. “Myron,” she said, “what is your architecture about?” If you had one thing to say about your architecture, what would you say? June was struck by the simplicity of Myron’s response: “He just looked at me and said ‘Circle, square, triangle’.”

Goldfinger’s gnomic statement inspired the title of an exhibition about his legacy at the Paul Rudolph Institute for Modern Architecture (PRIMA) in New York. Hosted by PRIMA President and CEO Kelvin Dickinson Jr., Circle, square, triangle: houses I’ve never lived in: The residential work of Myron Goldfinger 1963-2008 is on view until March 22, 2025. The exhibition’s subtitle comes from the foreword to his 1992 monograph, Myron Goldfinger: architect, in which Goldfinger recalled the glamorous houses he admired while growing up in working-class Atlantic City, writing “I still build the houses I never lived in as a child.”

The Gilbert and Marsha Schulman Residence, Montague, New York, designed by Myron Goldfinger in 1977. © Norman McGrath, courtesy of the Paul Rudolph Institute For Modern Architecture

Contradicting this simple three-form summary of his life’s work, Goldfinger left behind a voluminous archive of his decades-long architectural practice, best known for his geometric houses set in dramatic seaside or landscaped settings. sylvan buildings, most of them built in the upscale suburbs and vacation towns around New York. City. The exhibition draws on drawings, plans, models, photographs, and publicity materials for built and unbuilt residential projects, carefully preserved but never properly cataloged. This archive moved a mile to the east side of Manhattan, from the Goldfingers’ apartment in the IM Pei-designed Kips Bay Towers to PRIMA’s home in Paul Rudolph’s recently iconic Modulightor building on East 58th Street.

Myron Goldfinger. Photo © David Michael Kennedy, courtesy of the Paul Rudolph Institute For Modern Architecture

But the most important donation to PRIMA is that of June Goldfinger herself. Inspired by PRIMA’s mission to preserve Rudolph’s legacy, June joined the organization’s board of directors and helped Dickinson sort through the residue of her late husband’s architectural firm, where she worked as a decorator interior design on many projects.

This personal touch allowed the exhibition and archive project to come to life. Dickinson and around 20 volunteers are working to digitize Goldfinger’s archives to preserve his legacy and make his work available to scholars, enthusiasts and the next generation of architects. June thinks Myron would have been delighted with PRIMA’s choice: Rudolph was his professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s and, according to June, was one of the only modern architects whose work followed the Goldfingers. Today, Goldfinger inspires Dickinson and PRIMA: “We realized that our mission was bigger than that of Paul Rudolph. There are works by other architects that are also in danger of being forgotten. And so our mission grew.

Rudolph’s influence is apparent in the cantilevered angular triangles of the first project in the series, Myron’s home for himself and June in Waccabuc, Westchester County. Built shortly after starting her own and her family’s practice, June gave Myron carte blanche to design their home, believing it was the first and last time her husband would be able to build to her vision without the requirements from anyone.

The Waccabuc house caused a sensation and was published in the Mid-May 1971 edition of Record Houses as part of a file on houses designed by architects for themselves. It gained enough notoriety to inspire parody, with legendary RECORD cartoonist Alan Dunn imagine the standoff between a woman on a balcony overlooking the cedar facade as a delivery man begs her to come down to sign for a package. As in many of Dunn’s cartoons, it is the truth of the joke that gives it bite: omitted from the exhibition’s wall text but documented in Online project listing by PRIMA It’s the fact that when June moved in, she was surprised to find the kitchen on the second floor and even more surprised to find no designated space for their little girls. Luckily for the Goldfinger family, Myron’s modular construction (built around the standard size of an 8-foot by 15-foot sliding glass door) and June’s talent for interiors found space to raise a family in the home where they remained for more than five decades.

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Drawing of the Myron and June Goldfinger residence (1969) in Waccabuc, New York (1); Cartoon by Alan Dunn in Architectural file representing the residence (2). Images © The Estate of Myron Goldfinger, courtesy of the Paul Rudolph Institute For Modern Architecture (1); Architectural file (2). Click to enlarge.

Goldfinger added the circle to his toolbox when building the next project featured in the exhibit, the 1970 Matkovic House. Built for June’s parents in Sands Point on Long Island’s North Shore, the curved forms of the house evoke the hulls of boats from his father-in-law’s maritime company. In one of the most personal and vivid sketches in the exhibition, Goldfinger illustrates the curving forms of the house. Those looking for the exhibition’s titular triangles will find them not in the house but in its inhabitants, who are drawn in Goldberg’s signature renderings as a twisted triangle. This far from idealized portrayal of his customers does not appear to have upset Goldfinger’s in-laws, nor the many other customers he and June cultivated as friends and regular customers. Goldfinger has benefited from being able to express his personal vision of architecture in conversation with the individual needs of his clients, which has also gone a long way in ensuring that children’s bedrooms are no longer forgotten.

With his three forms, Rudolph continued to design residences throughout the 2000s, ranging from New York apartments to Antigua resorts. Circle, Square, Triangle presents a dozen residential projects from Goldfinger. We see Goldfinger’s dramatic side in his renovation of singer Roberta Flack’s apartment in Manhattan’s legendary Dakota building. Goldfinger’s illustration is pure showbiz, with mirrored walls surrounded by round Hollywood light bulbs, while his plans assure the famously demanding Datoka Co-op board of directors that “SUSPENDED CEILING SUPPORTS DO NOT WILL NOT DISTURB THE CEILING MOLDINGS” (sic). Wall text informs us that some of the building’s historic moldings were in fact disturbed, much to the dismay of architectural critic and (former) Dakota resident Paul Goldberger. The exhibit quotes Myron Goldfinger’s response to the original details: “It wasn’t good then and it’s not good now.”

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Drawings of the Herbert and Julia Zack Residence (1977), Sands Point, New York (3) and the Laura Blau Residence (1970), Bedford, New York (4). Images © The Estate of Myron Goldfinger, courtesy of the Paul Rudolph Institute For Modern Architecture

Each project in the exhibition is presented through a variety of media covering the design, construction and domestic life of the building. Hand-drawn interior renderings in three-point perspective oozing ’70s glamor are juxtaposed with detailed construction drawings and carefully staged interior photographs. For projects lacking architectural models, PRIMA honored Goldfinger’s legacy as a teacher and commissioned new models from architecture students at the Pratt Institute, where Goldfinger taught for a decade and worked with the eminent researcher Sibyl Moholy-Nagy.

June Goldfinger holds a copy of the 1978 issue of Record Houses with Myron’s Marcus House at Chappaquiddick on the cover. Photo courtesy of Sam Furnival

The aim of the exhibition is to show the human hand at every stage of the design, construction and even marketing of these projects. Goldfinger’s human touch and keen eye are something PRIMA’s Dickinson hopes young architects can learn from, even in the age of AutoCAD and generative AI.

When asked to sum up her husband’s legacy herself, June emphasizes not the spaces he created but the people who inhabit them. “Its architecture really celebrates the occupants. He celebrated people. With this exhibition of his residential work and PRIMA’s ongoing efforts to archive and share it, Goldfinger’s humanist vision for architecture can be celebrated.

Circle, Square, Triangle: The Houses I Never Lived In: The Residential Work of Myron Goldfinger 1963-2008 is on view at the Paul Rudolph Institute of Modern Architecture until March 22. A parallel exhibition, Circle, square, triangle: a world I wanted to live in. The public and unbuilt work of Myron Goldfinger 1963-2008 is exhibited at the Mitchell Algus Gallery in New York.