Lebbeus Woods
Lebbeus Woods | |
---|---|
New York, New York[1] | |
Occupation(s) | Architect and artist |
Website | lebbeuswoods |
Lebbeus Woods (May 31, 1940 – October 30, 2012) was an American architect and artist known for his unconventional and experimental designs.[2][3] Known for his rich, yet mainly unbuilt work and its nonetheless significant impact on the architectural sphere, Lebbeus Woods and his oeuvre are considered visionary, describing a radically experimental world built on the principles of heterogeneity and multiplicity and bridging thus the gap between numerous fields including architecture, philosophy, and mathematics. Reconfiguring the architectural space in environments of crisis, whether it be natural, social, political, or financial, Woods stated: “I’m not interested in living in a fantasy world. All my work is still meant to evoke real architectural spaces. But what interests me is what the world would be like if we were free of conventional limits. Maybe I can show what could happen if we lived by a different set of rules.”[4]
Career
Woods studied architecture at the
The author of nine books, he was a 1994 recipient of the Chrysler Design Award.[3] He was a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.[2]
Philosophy
While the purpose of most architects is the construction of their designed work, for Woods, the essence of architecture transcended these limits by seeking something other than an idea expressed as a built form. Interested in what would happen if the architect was freed from conventional restrictions, he did not intend to generate and construct a design proposal of a specific geometrical form in order to approach an existing architectural problem. To the contrary, his work consists of intricately complex drawings and designs, envisioning and exploring new types of space. Yet, he considered his architecture neither utopian nor visionary but an attempt to approach reality under a radical set of ideas and conditions.[4]
In his visionary world, architecture instrumentalizes the continuous transformation of the human being as its user who becomes its creator, giving it meaning and content through their way of acting in space. All individuals, whether they have an architectural background or not, should become creators of this new world. A person devoid of architectural education is called upon to act as an architect and in parallel, the architect needs to act upon as a person with no architectural background.[8] To this end, Woods saw a parallelism between the designer of a building and the creator of a pyramid who follows forms imposed by those who represent, express, dominate, and exploit others’ obedience to regulatory rules. This pyramid, based on a triangular structure, is by nature the most stable solid. On one hand, at the lowest level of the structure Wood places the inhabitant of the pyramid as the bearer of its full load. On the other hand, the architect who designs building non types, or else the freespace of unknown purpose and meaning, inverts the pyramid and creates new building types. Every resident of this inverted structure becomes a top. The pyramid extends into the space of time seeking a base or terminal point to complete its form. Yet, the base subsides before the volume of the experience increases. In the undefined darkness of the void where this structure is located, many pyramids interpenetrate and dissolve, one in the other. They generate a flow; a form of indeterminacy; a contradictory plan; a city of unknown origin and destination; a state of continuous transformation.[9] This can as also be seen in Woods's project Horizon Houses about which he states:
They are structures experimenting with our perception of spatial transformations, accomplished without any material changes to the structures themselves. In these projects, my concern was the question of space. The engineering questions of how to turn the houses could be answered by conventional mechanical means—cranes and the like—but these seem clumsy and inelegant. The mechanical solution may lie in the idea of self-propelling structures, using hydraulics. But of more immediate concern: how would the changing spaces impact the ways we might inhabit them?[10]
The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators. He is best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo that were included in the publication of Radical Reconstruction in 1997 (Sarajevo after the war, Havana in the grips of the ongoing trade embargo, and San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake).
Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.[11]
Woods, who envisioned experimental constructs and environments, stated that, "the interplay of metrical systems establishing boundaries of materials and energetic forms is the foundation of a universal science (universcience) whose workers include all individuals".[This quote needs a citation]
Realizing the need to redefine the meaning of human existence by means of architecture, Woods envisioned the creation of spaces sheltering the diverse material and immaterial needs of each of their inhabitants. In his works, terms of a conventional architectural vocabulary, such as the void, wall, volume, and surface, give their place to combinations of heterogeneous and radical interpretations of their content including the "freespace", "multiplicity", and "heterarchy".[12]
In a similar way, Michel Foucault identified transitional spaces that accommodate diversity or else the other pertaining to each inhabitant as opposed to the entire community. For him, these heterotopias are real and institutionalized spaces lost within the grid of the urban fabric. However, they constitute "a kind of dislocation or a realized utopia, in which all the real spatial arrangements, all other spatial arrangements encountered within society, are simultaneously represented, challenged and overturned".[13]
Freespace
Woods introduced the term freespace to propose an architectural approach freed from its conventional, predetermined and
Wall
Woods developed a comprehensive theory about the wall as a structural element, giving it a multi-dimensional and totally different value from that of the boundary. For him, walls form as a result of the ephemeral culture that develops in the midst of a crisis which manifests itself not in its core, where the most damaging effects are expressed, but in zones on its periphery. The zones of crisis are shaped by the collision of dissimilar situations, things, and ideologies and constitute the only places where new and vital ideas for the development of a new culture can emerge. In this context, the wall is an element which defines rather than divides spaces that lie between different spatial conditions and its user is one who purposely went there not fitting in any of the conventionally designed spaces. The wall's role is to neither build a completely new logic, nor abandon existing systems and ideas but to trigger a new way of thinking about space.[8]
Multiplicity
In Woods’ philosophy, space and structure constitute a form of noise or chaos known as multiplicity. In his work, multiplicity is defined as a source of change consisting of undefined compositions of elements with indistinguishable trajectories. The elements form an aggregate but not a totality. Thus, multiplicity can be described but not clearly defined. It contains a sense of indeterminate motion which can influence and create sets of elements rather than a transition from one point to another. Multiplicity, for Woods, is directly linked to creation but it involves the possibility of chaos and violence. The multiplicity of chaos triggers an endless series of changes, some of which are violent. Under such circumstances, Woods envisioned a world that is reborn and continuously transforming, thus responding to the ever-changing environment but also to each individual's needs.[8]
Heterarchy
In a society where heterogeneity is established as a form of homogeneity, Woods envisioned the foundation of heterarchy, a societal structure based on dialogue and collaboration. In this context, the individual stands as a unique entity called heteros pertaining to the other; the one that differs from the group.[9] In this society, Woods believes that the architect needs to first respect and meet the needs of each heteros member to satisfy eventually the ones of the larger group.[9]
Works
Terra Nova - Korean Demilitarized Zone
In 1988, as part of the Kyong Park exhibition at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in
Woods’ Terra Nova-DMZ project had a double purpose: first, to comment on the
Havana
In 1995, Woods dealt with the urban fabric of Havana, in a period when Cuba was undergoing the consequences of a socio-political revolution that was turning into communism, of which the most important was the trade embargo by the United States. Under these terms, the Cuban government encouraged the construction of public buildings and social housing as a form of financial and technical support. Whole building blocks pre-fabricated in Yugoslavia were transferred to Havana ready for assembly, triggering the development of a type of architecture similar to the one implemented in eastern Europe. Woods's work aimed to activate every citizen in Havana by proposing the practice of a radical architecture which he considered an extension of the revolution rather than an adaptation to old habits and conditions.[14] To this end, he developed three architectural proposals.[8]
The first one dealt with the 6 km-long avenue of Malecon which forms the northern border between Havana and the Caribbean Sea. Here, Woods envisioned to create an artificial breakwater which would protect the urban fabric against the tides caused by tropical storms and hurricanes flooding a large part of the city every three to four years. It would be also used as a balcony to the sea for recreational purposes. Using the energy of the tides, the breakwater would tilt increasing in height and strength (Woods, 2010). Woods' aimed to use the boundary in a dual way: on one hand, to protect and separate the urban fabric from the forces of nature; on the other hand, to create a new space on the extension of the old boundary between land and sea in an attempt to reconcile an artificial and a natural element.[8] [This paragraph needs a photo]
The second proposal focused on the city's historic center known as
Woods's third proposal did not dictate the result, but provided accurate models and rules that could be transformed into built forms. Thanks to its vibrant culture and its unstable political history, Havana was for him an incubator for the study of the function of institutions of any type. His aim was to design rules and practices through which the institutes could be reorganized and reformed. In Havana, this center was to be dedicated to the study and analysis of holistic models of both fixed and fluid surfaces representing the paradoxical landscapes of contemporary cities of the era that included the human and natural forces of change.[8]
Underground Berlin
In 1990s Berlin, in order to reduce the importance of the Wall that divided the city into the Eastern and Western part, Lebbeus Woods envisioned the construction of an underground community along the U-Bahn lines, a project which again remained on paper. His goal was to encourage the citizens of Berlin to reconnect their own city and their fragmented culture. This would require the overthrow of the current system of values and social control which Woods wished to achieve by architectural means. Starting with the destruction of the neglected and abandoned by public and private institutions urban space (freespace), he proposed the construction of spaces of extreme conditions of living and dwelling for the ones who abolish the conventional principles of architecture. These freespaces would compose a linear network of autonomous habitat and work structures, as he described them whose inhabitants would be in charge of building their underground city.[9] [This paragraph needs a photo]
In the underground city, inverted light metal towers and bridges are electronically connected with large public ground spaces as well as with each other. The structures are in constant transformation vibrating by the forces of the earth. They were conceived as intertwined landscapes of dialogue where there is unlimited freedom of access to communication systems; these are the "free-zones", which appeared for the first time in Woods' philosophy and vocabulary as "Berlin Freezones".
In the terrestrial city the ground functions as a surface of friction resisting the city's energy. In this way, Wood argues, terrestrial life is limited to only two dimensions and the notion of the surface is stronger than that of the depth. In this sense, the ground stands as a boundary. To the contrary, in the underground city, the city of depth, the surface does not function as a point of reference. The underground inhabitants do not seek to meet their daily needs in a standardized way and the architecture of the underground world aims to lay the foundation for a new plasticity in the way of thinking and experiencing space or else, an experimental way of living.[9] [This paragraph needs a photo]
Influence on film
Woods sued the producers of the film
Woods is credited as the "conceptual architect"[17] for Alien 3, establishing the look and feel of the film, especially the opening sequence.
Personal life
Woods married Pattilee (née Haagsma) in April 1961. Together they had two children: Angela, born in 1963, and Lebbeus Woods II, born in 1967. As of 2024, Lebbeus Woods II currently works in finance, and Angela is a social worker. Woods has three granddaughters and four grandsons.
Woods' marriage to Pattilee dissolved in 1972. He remarried Aleksandra (née Wagner) in 1998, with whom he had one daughter, Victoria. As of 2024, Victoria is an artist residing in New York.
See also
Bibliography
- Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog by Clare Jacobson (2015), ISBN 978-1616893347
- OneFiveFour (2011), ISBN 978-0-910-41380-0
- The Storm and the Fall (2004), ISBN 978-1-568-98421-6
- Radical Reconstruction (2001), ISBN 978-1-568-98286-1
- Pamphlet Architecture 15: War and Architecture (1993), ISBN 978-1-568-98011-9
- The New City (1992), ISBN 978-0-671-76812-6(paperback)
Gallery
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The Hermitage sculpture (1998) by Lebbeus Woods in Rotterdam, The Netherlands
References
- ^ Lebbeus Woods, Experimental Architect, Dies Archived October 31, 2012, at the Wayback Machine at archdaily.com, access date: October 30, 2012.
- ^ a b "Lebbeus Woods Faculty Page at European Graduate School (Biography, bibliography and video lectures)". European Graduate School. Archived from the original on October 24, 2010. Retrieved September 25, 2010.
- ^ a b c "1994 Chrysler Design Award to Lebbeus Woods". Chrysler Design Awards. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved December 23, 2015.
- ^ a b Yardley, William (October 31, 2012). "Lebbeus Woods, Architect Who Bucked Convention, Dies at 72". The New York Times. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
- ^ "Two Short Films Capture the Essence of Steven Holl Architects' Sliced Porosity Block". ArchDaily. February 20, 2013. Archived from the original on October 14, 2018. Retrieved October 14, 2018.
- ^ Ouroussoff, Nicolai (August 25, 2008). "An Architect Unshackled by Limits of the Real World". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 17, 2009. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
- ^ Domus Magazine March 2013
- ^ ISBN 1568982860.
- ^ ISBN 1854901486.
- ^ Manaugh, Author Geoff (March 2, 2012). "Star Wheel Horizon". BLDGBLOG. Retrieved May 19, 2019.
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has generic name (help) - ISBN 1-56898-011-6.
- OCLC 908138878.
- ISBN 0847815110.
- ^ "LEBBEUS WOODS". LEBBEUS WOODS. Retrieved May 19, 2019.
- ^ "WOODS v. UNIVERSAL CITY STUDIOS, INC. | Leagle.com". Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
- ^ Copyright website on "12 Monkeys" Archived February 2, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Film credits for "Alien 3"". IMDb. Archived from the original on August 17, 2017. Retrieved June 28, 2018.
External links
- Official website
- Website
- Lebbeus Woods Faculty Page at Cooper Union School of Architecture
- Lebbeus Woods Faculty Page at European Graduate School. (Biography, bibliography and video lectures)
- Research Institute for Experimental Architecture (RIEA)
- Carnegie Museum of Arts
- Cold Bacon
- 1994 Chrysler Design Award for Lebbeus Woods citation
- Lebbeus Woods-The Reality Of Theory
- BLDGBLOG: Without Walls: An Interview with Lebbeus Woods