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People who saw the strangely shaped house being built in Aurora — its red curved steel ribs, a black coal wall dotted with marbles and glass cullet — had different names for it, Life magazine reported in 1951. Some called it a “birdcage.” “Big apple.” “Dome.” “Hangar.”

Their comments were enough for its owners, Chicago Academy of Fine Arts director Ruth Van Sickle Ford and her husband, Albert, to put a sign outside that read: “We don’t like your house either.”

Nearly eight decades after it was built, the Ford House continues to be one of the best examples of the ingenuity that sprang from the mind of architect Bruce Goff — and the mixed reaction that creative wellspring could elicit.

The Kansas native has been called an “outsider” and a “r

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