Archinect - News

Lebbeus Woods: The Architect Who Dared to Ask ‘What If?’

2013-02-16T18:37:00-05:00

San Francisco Project: Inhabiting the Quake, Quake City, 1995; graphite and pastel on paper; 14.5 inches by 23 inches by 0.75 inches; Collection SFMOMA.

Lewis Wallace previews the new exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Lebbeus Woods, Architect. While not a full retrospective of Woods’ career, the exhibit shows off three decades of his work in the form of drawings, paintings, models and sketchbooks filled with bold ideas, raw concepts and cryptic inscriptions.

Memoriam for Lebbeus Woods, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt

2012-11-12T00:06:00-05:00

Woods belonged to a small group of architects, including Peter Eisenman, and Daniel Liebeskind, working in the 1980s and 1990s who questioned the relevance of the utopian modernist architecture in the late twentieth century. Woods deferred from his colleagues, however, in that with one exception, his buildings were never constructed.

Why the Unbuilt Visions of Architect Lebbeus Woods Matter

2012-11-09T12:46:00-05:00

Woods’s work goes far beyond its influence on his more actively building contemporaries and disciples. His thin portfolio has unduly sidelined him from popular discourse, sequestering him from the more audible dialogues concerning contemporary architecture. To consider Woods a mere inspiration to others, a teacher and an enabler, is both deferential and reductive.

Editor's Picks #288

2012-11-05T23:50:00-05:00

In 2012, the DRX (The Design Research Exchange a non-profit residency program for researchers hosted by HENN Architekten) took place in Berlin from July 16th, 2012 through September 7th, 2012. Participants included four invited DRX Experts and eight invited DRX Researchers all of whom focused on the topic Minimal Surface Highrise Structures. As part of the DRX 2012, three prototypic 500m (1,640ft) tall Highrise Structures were developed as so-called ProtoTowers.

The latest edition of the Working out of the Box series features Skip Schwartz who is currently the CEO of a heath care service/technology company that provides primary healthcare to people mostly on a virtual basis. The two main lessons that he gained from architecture school and the architecture industry were that "Design counts" and "Project management counts".

News
The world lost three very talented architects last week including, Lebbeus Woods dead at 72, John M. Johansen the last surviving member of the Harvard...

Lebbeus Woods dead at 72

2012-10-30T12:46:00-04:00

Deeply sorry to have just heard that Lebbeus Woods, a true visionary architect and astonishing draftsman, died this morning. A great loss.

Michael Kimmelman, Architecture critic for the NY Times, is reporting this morning, via Twitter, that Lebbeus Woods died in his sleep last night in New York. Details are still emerging.

Lebbeus Woods talks with Thom Mayne

2012-04-23T17:37:00-04:00

Your message is really a philosophical message to architects. You’re trying to show us how we can build cities and break out of the old modes of urban planning and urban design. And even thinking about or imagining cities that we have had for the past few hundred years, you’re offering a new way. I don’t know anyone else that’s done that today. Maybe someone will say Colin Rowe. OK—Collage City, but this goes far, far beyond Collage City and any urban theory of Corbusier or anyone else.

Excerpts of a Candid Conversation between Thom Mayne and Lebbeus Woods Recorded in the privacy of LW’s studio, transcribed by Dave Irwin

Lebbeus Woods on Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Center

2012-02-16T23:40:00-05:00

... one the most gifted architects of my time has been reduced to wrapping such conventional programs of use in merely expressionistic forms, without letting a single ray of her genius illuminate the human condition. Am I being pretentious and overly demanding? Of course. But that’s the way disappointed lovers behave. Exaggerated emotions. Absurd demands. Anger that transgresses all reason. She has let me down, and what makes it worse is that she apparently couldn’t care less.

LEBBEUS WOODS: WHY I BECAME AN ARCHITECT—Part 2

2012-02-08T16:54:00-05:00

The marriage of light and geometry does indeed find its consummation in architecture, but for me it did not come about so easily. At age eighteen I entered a fine school of engineering, then transferred to a fine school of architecture, finishing there when I was twenty-four. After ten or so years of working in corporate offices, learning what it meant to build—and leading a rather turbulent life—I went out on my own.

Lebbeus Woods shares part 2 of his personal story describing why he became an architect.

WHY I BECAME AN ARCHITECT—Part 1 « LEBBEUS WOODS

2012-02-06T11:08:00-05:00

I would like to tell a short story—or perhaps not such a short story—about the reasons why I chose to become an architect. Exactly why this blog’s readers should be interested in my recollections about such a matter I cannot say, and perhaps I am mistaken in spinning out such a story here. Still, I feel compelled to do so and can only hope for the readers’ tolerance.

QUESTIONING CATASTROPHE

2012-01-23T20:24:00-05:00

Human beings and their communities are fragile because they are sustainable only within a narrow range of conditions and possibilities. It is the main task of architecture to maintain this range or to create it where it has not existed before. To some extent it is also architecture’s responsibility to expand this range when people require it not only for survival but also to flourish within the demands of change brought on by catastrophic events such as earthquake and tsunami.

MAS CONTEXT: ABBERATION launches!

2011-12-06T17:12:23-05:00

If firmness, utility, and delight are the enduring pinnacles of architectural achievement, then it would appear architecture’s moral destiny is a foregone conclusion. But is it possible that opportunities for valuable cultural insight are being lost out of deference to this legacy? We examine forces, trends, and ideas that enhance the significance of the built environment despite, or due to, their deviant nature.

Latest issue of MAS CONTEXT now available on-line - fresh content from Lebbeus Woods, Paul Shepheard, Jürgen Mayer H, formlessfinder, Luis Urculo, and...MAS!

Also includes the next part of the 3-part video series "Architecture and the Unspeakable" from our studio: the Shibuya Tower Project (link below)

We saw it coming

2011-09-07T18:20:36-04:00

Marking the decade since the attacks of September 11, 2001, Lebbeus Woods offers reflections on the context for the tragedy, and the reconstruction's bitter sense of business as usual

From the School Blogs: #23: EOYS [Icing on the Cake]

2011-05-20T20:42:31-04:00

So the summer is here and it's been raining all week in NYC. I'm off to DC for the weekend! As I promised, photos from the GSAPP 2011 End-of-the-Year Show. Are you excited? I am particularly proud of all the work everyone at our school produced. Architecture is alive and kicking.

From the School Blogs: #21: 18 critics, 10 projects, 2 dyson air multipliers, 115 avery

2011-05-11T13:43:47-04:00

Place: Living Room Studio Time: 12:18 PM Photos from the final!

Anthony shares with us photos from the final reviews at Columbia. Star-studded cast!

Steven Holl Architects To Build A 'Sliced Porosity Block' In Chengdu, China

2008-02-25T14:49:00-05:00

Steven Holl Architects (SHA) has recently been commissioned by CapitaLand China, to realize, a large mixed-use complex in Chengdu, China. Scheduled to open in late 2010, this “giant chunk of a metropolis” houses a hybrid complex of generous public spaces flanked by five towers with offices, serviced apartments, retail, a hotel, cafes, and restaurants. The 105,000 square feet site is developed to maximize public open space and to stimulate micro-urbanism....

The ‘Sliced Porosity Block’ will be located just south of the intersection of the First Ring Road and Ren Min Nan Road. Its sun sliced geometry results from minimum daylight exposures to the surrounding urban fabric prescribed by code. Porous and inviting from every side, five vertical entrances cut through a layer of micro-urban shopping before leading to the elevated public ‘Three Valley’ plaza. A great urban terrace on the scale of Rockefeller Center, this multi-level plaza in the center of the complex is sculpted by sto...