The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles has acquired two collections of drawings and sketches by visionary architect Lebbeus Woods. 

Woods passed away in 2012 after a long career as a radical, inventive architectural designer who created thousands of fantastical visions for foreboding futuristic architectures. The GRI has acquired 46 drawings from Woods's A-City and 4 Cities and Beyond projects. The two speculative works offer beguiling pen and ink as well as color pencil visions for futuristic settlements that appear idyllic and tragic all at once. 

Woods was born in Lansing, Michigan and worked at Eero Saarinen and Associates under Kevin Roche before launching his own independent, speculative practice in the 1970s. Woods also taught around the world, including at the Cooper Union in New York City. Woods's practice worked extensively through drawings and temporary installations to generate critical and foreboding visions of quasi-dystopian futures that synthesized the techno-futurist tectonic and material sensibilities of the time with constructivist and Piranesian aesthetics to great visionary effect. 

In addition to the above archival items, the GRI has also acquired a 30-page sketchbook that Woods kept while he visited Los Angeles between 1986 and 1988. The new collections will join two other archival holdings of Woods's work by the GRI: Woods's Drawings for the Berlin Free Zone Project and a series of journals made between 1988 and 1997. 

Regarding the most recent acquisitions, Maristella Casciato, senior curator of architecture at the Getty Research Institute, said via press release, “As a teacher who linked drawing to theory, Lebbeus Woods’ influence on generations of architects is difficult to overstate," adding, “With these acquisitions, the Getty Research Institute is the largest repository for Lebbeus Woods’ theoretical thinking on the city.”