Formally trained as an architect, Hoffman envisions himself in a dual role as artist. “Architecture is a means to an end, not an end in itself. There shouldn’t be any separation between art and our surroundings.” It is precisely this philosophy that sets Hoffman apart as Fort Lauderdale’s visionary, award-winning architect and artistic furniture designer.

Hoffman is currently designing a line of custom furniture, which he displays in his own studio and gallery, building the ultimate “Florida” home in Sebastian Inlet, and acting as artistic coordinator over construction of a showcase hand-built wooden home in North Carolina.

The architect/artist conceives his ideas in his utilitarian loft studio and gallery at 2000 E. Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale. “It may be the only loft studio in Fort Lauderdale,” says Hoffman, who clearly enjoys his white-walled and wood-floored, SoHo-like digs.

Hoffman looks very much the part of the independent artist, with his long hair, bushy mustache and wearing wire-rimmed glasses. On the studio door hangs a sign, “Hoffman Art and Architecture.”

The furniture designing evolved over the course of his career, Hoffman says. He explains that as he renovated homes and yacht interiors for clients, he eventually ended up creating custom furniture to compliment his architecture. “Actually, the furniture came as a surprise,” says Hoffman. “But it’s something I can create, design, fabricate and derive immediate gratification from.” Hoffman says he sometimes uses easily accessed and affordable materials to build his furniture, relying heavily on galvanized steel, wood and concrete.

“Architecture is a means to an end, not an end in itself.”

One of his favorite pieces is his unique bed, Oblomov’s Dream. The sculpture-like bed is named after a fictional character from an Ivan Goncharov 19th-Century novel. According to the piece of Russian literature, Oblomov is man unable to decide what he should do on any given day, and ends up spending most of his years confined to his bed.

The bed’s platform is matched maple veneer with solid maple wood rails, oil finished. The triangle frame itself is made out of solid cold rolled steel, sandblasted and clear powder coated. The frame rests on concrete cylinders with sandblasted vertical surfaces and smooth carnauba wax-polished tops. The minimal-styled bed takes a simple futon mattress. A recent feature in Interior Design magazine for Hoffman’s Oblomov’s Dream brought 566 inquiries about the $5,600 bed, which was also accepted in the 1991 Museum of Art Hortt Competition.

But Hoffman didn’t graduate from architecture school envisioning himself as the designer of beds. “When I first graduated architectural school I quickly became disillusioned,” says Hoffman. “Although I’m very grateful for the theoretical & basic design aspects of my architectural design education, the reality of what is required to put a building together, in the real world is difficult to realize in the current architectural school system. “Suddenly you find yourself in a drafting room drawing lines.”

It was the restrictive nature of working as an architect for a large architectural firm in Boston, combined with an industry-wide slump, which landed him back home in South Florida.

After two years teaching design at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, he went to the University of Colorado for his master’s in architecture, graduating in 1979. His graduate thesis was on the design of passively cooled South Florida houses. A few years of working for design firms followed. In 1986, he began his own studio and gallery where he produces his own brand of architecture.

A particularly exciting project underway at Hoffman’s studio is the design for a “Florida” home at Sebastian Inlet. Designing a new home is always a welcome challenge for Hoffman. “It is an architectural design indigenous to Florida,” says Hoffman. He explains his concept is based on a natural, open feel, not unlike the Seminole Indian chickee hut.

Hoffman says the home will be passively cooled, having French doors all around leading to an encircling, screened-in porch, which overlooks the wooded property.

The usual developer-produced South Florida architecture is cold, closed and unimaginative to Hoffman. To him, the pseudo-Spanish-Mediterranean style aka “The Boca Look” especially is just more, and soon to be dated, tract house. “Florida homes should be more contiguous with the environment, an extension of and to the outdoors,” he says. “People don’t always know what they want until they see it,” Hoffman says.

He feels many people could do better for themselves with a custom-designed home. “If people went to an architect with their individual needs, they might get a better quality design and construction for the same or even less money.”

“People generally just aren’t offered many choices.”

Hoffman cites as major influences the Bauhaus School of Design, Frank Lloyd Wright, California architect Frank Geary, and an oriental philosophy of architecture. Another influence includes Christopher Alexander and his book A Pattern Language.

Hoffman is getting a rare opportunity to explore his architectural ideas and influences by acting as architect and artistic coordinator for a collaborative structure being built in a wooded area on the campus of the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina.

The project, supported by a grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, is based on the Bauhaus approach, which strived to bring together all creative efforts into the whole in which there is no distinction between monumental and decorative art.

Hoffman is directing a group of collaborating craft artists from many different disciplines. The purpose of the hand-built project is to provide a better understanding of excellence in design and craftsmanship, and provide students at the famous Penland School with a living classroom.

Meanwhile, Hoffman intends to continue his work designing furniture and renovating homes in an indigenous Florida aesthetic in prestigious neighborhoods such as Rio Vista in Fort Lauderdale and Coral Gables in Dade County.

Hoffman’s work is surfacing publicly as articles about his talents appear regularly in regional newspapers and national professional publications. One of the homes he redesigned in Coral Gables was featured on the Miami Vice television show.

But Hoffman predicts the specter of fame and fortune will have little impact on his lifestyle. The challenge of creation is motivates him.

“Product is primary, monetary gain is secondary. Money’s advantage is that it provides me with the means to build.

“Even if I were endowed with the financial freedom, I’d be doing exactly the same thing—designing.”