Mario Gooden

Mario Gooden is Associate Professor of Practice at Columbia GSAPP and Principal at Huff + Gooden Architects. He also directs the Global Africa Lab with Mabel O. Wilson. Gooden graduated magna cum laude from Clemson University in 1987 with a B.S. in Design and received a Masters of Architecture degree from Columbia University in 1990 and is a recipient of the McKim Prize.

Mario Gooden’s work, writings and lectures frequently examine architecture and the translation of cultural landscapes defined by the parameters of technology, race, class gender and sexuality. In 2006 he completed the installation entitled UnSpoken Spaces: Inside and Outside the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Space at the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, South Carolina. Most recently, Gooden is author of Dark Space (Columbia University Press, 2016).

In 1996, Mr. Gooden was recognized as a Teacher of the Year at the University of Florida. In 1998-1999 he served as a Thesis advisor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and in 1999 he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Arizona. In the fall of 2001 he returned to Columbia University as a Visiting Assistant Professor. Most recently, he was the Louis I. Kahn Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yale University during the Spring 2005. Gooden has presented papers at numerous conferences and has lectured extensively at various schools of architecture and design on his firms work.

Mario Gooden's professional experience includes work in the offices of Zaha Hadid Architect in London in 1989 and Steven Holl Architects in New York from 1992 to 1993. In 2001 The Architectural League of New York recognized Gooden and his partner Ray Huff as “Emerging Voices.” His work has been featured in many journals and publications including Architecture Magazine, Architectural Record, Metropolis, The New York Times, Architecture & Urbanism (A+U), and Artforum. He has been invited to present his work at the International Forum of Young Architects and his work has been exhibited widely including the Municipal Arts Society in New York, the National Building Museum in Washington, DC and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi).

Huff + Gooden Architects is a collaborative architecture practice dedicated to the design and exploration of architecture and its relationships to culture and knowledge. The firm’s approach to design is taken as an interpretation and translation of each project’s cultural and geographical situations. At a fundamental level, the necessity of architecture in the firm’s works is about the experience of architecture to engage intellectually, spatially, and spiritually.

Huff + Gooden and the firm’s design for the Virginia Key Beach Park Museum is included in the American architectural history textbook, USA: Modern Architectures in History (Reaktion Books, 2008) by Gwendolyn Wright.

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