Geoff Wooding 1954 - 2010
Geoffrey Marshall Wooding, AIA
Geoff Wooding grew up in Connecticut and graduated from the Choate School in 1972. He attended the Architectural Association, London before completing his B. Arch. at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture. He spent the next six years working for prominent architects in Austria, Germany and the U.S., including Robert Krier, O.M. Ungers, Richard Meier and Partners, and Kallmann McKinnell & Wood Architects.
In 1985, Geoff joined Goody Clancy, where he spent the next 25 years establishing himself as a talented and passionate designer of significant college and university buildings, mixed-income housing developments and award-winning student residential complexes. As a Principal of the firm and one of its primary design leaders since 1996, he helped Goody Clancy expand its New England regional practice to become a nationally-respected architecture, planning and preservation firm. He died January 26th after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer.
Geoff’s projects include the Tent City apartment complex in Copley Square; the Koch Biology Building at MIT; two graduate-student living/learning complexes for the Tuck School at Dartmouth College; the Hill Neighborhood Dining Center at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor); the Village at 115 for Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland); Oak Hill mixed-income housing (Pittsburgh); the Undercroft at Trinity Church in the City of Boston; and the South Residence Halls and Dining Center for The University of Chicago.
Whether designing research laboratories or student housing, Geoff brought a level of intense commitment to creating spaces—both indoor and out—that bring people together and foster community. His colleagues knew him as a restless designer, never fully satisfied with his work and always striving for more elegance, economy of means, celebration of materials, technology and craft, and for a sense of place. Geoff would labor long and late in the office, sketching and exploring design solutions and guiding the firm’s younger staff members. That devotion to design excellence yielded him, and the firm, many repeat commissions from satisfied clients.
Geoff was devoted to his family: his wife Margit and their sons Maximilian and Sebastian, and loved traveling, skiing, sailing and windsurfing with them. He had been a ski instructor in Europe in the years after architecture school, and continued to teach at Stratton Mountain, VT for more than 25 years.
Even in his last months, Geoff continued to direct the designs of multiple new university science buildings and other academic projects, as well as maintaining his role as a leader of the firm. He was designing constantly and contributed to Goody Clancy’s winning a major college commission only a few weeks before his death.
A memorial service will be held at the Trinity Church Undercroft in Boston at 11am on February 13th. Donations in lieu of flowers may be sent to Hospice of the North Shore, 75 Sylvan Street, Suite B-102, Danvers, MA 01923.