Lebbeus Woods

Study of Woods' visionary architecture which is concerned with the cultural regeneration of society.

In the fall of 2007, Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012), long admired for his visionary architecture and mastery of drawing, began a blog. Part forum and part public journal, the eclectic mix of articles, drawings, anecdotes, poetry, interviews, and photographic essays explored topics ranging from architectural theory and criticism to education and politics. Amassing more than three hundred entries by its end in the summer of 2012, it is regarded by many as the most comprehensive and accessible archive of Woods's prodigious creativity. Slow Manifesto: Lebbeus Woods Blog, an edited volume of the blog's centerpiece entries, stands as a fragmentary essay on the nature of architecture that will be dear to architects, students, and thinkers everywhere.

Lebbeus Woods, Architect brings together drawings from the past 40 years by one of the most influential designers working in architecture. Beyond architects, Woods (1940-2012) has been hailed by designers, filmmakers, writers and artists as a significant voice in recent history; his works resonate across many disciplines for their conceptual depth, imaginative breadth and ethical potency. Woods worked cyclically, returning often to themes of architecture's ability to transform, resist and free the collective and the individual. As an architect whose work lies almost solely in the realm of the proposed and the unbuilt, his contributions to the field opened up new avenues for exploring and inscribing space. The publication centers on transformation as a recurring theme. The organization of the images of works is thematic rather than chronological.

Edited by Tracy Myers. Essays by Tracy Myers, Karsten Harries and Lebbeus Woods. Foreword by Richard Armstrong.

War and Architecture is a timely and moving response by architect Lebbeus Woods to the bombing of Sarajevo. With text in both English and Croatian, accompanied by the author's exquisitely drawn, hauntingly beautiful proposals, the book is both dedicated and addressed to the citizens of this ravaged city. Lebbeus Woods has long been fascinated by the intimate ties between architecture and violence. He identifies the two predominant patterns for rebuilding cities following catastrophic destruction: restoring the city exactly to its previous, "historical" state; or "erasing" the remains of the city to construct a new utopia. These, he argues, are twin forms of denial. Woods draws an analogy to the process of biological and emotional healing, presenting architectural forms that act as "injections," "scabs," "scars," and "new tissue," within the complex organism of a city. "Only by facing the insanity of willful destruction," he argues, "can reason begin to believe again in itself."

Lebbeus Woods is widely regarded as the most exciting and original architectural visionary today. His body of theoretical work and extraordinary drawings have served as inspiration for architects, artists, and legions of students. Radical Reconstruction, now available in paperback for the first time, contains projects that address the relationships between architecture and war, political revolution/reaction, and natural disasters. These projects define new approaches to the reconstruction of buildings and urban fabric damaged by unpredictable and largely uncontrollable forces of both human and natural origin.

American architect Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012) remains a quiet hero not only among his colleagues, but also for architectural students intrigued by the ideas and fluent beauty of his powerful graphic verve, as well as of his writing. His projects from the mid-1980s until the end of his life have been widely published. However, this AD, in collaboration with the Estate of Lebbeus Woods, explores the earlier period beginning in the late 1960s when Woodswas honing his draughtsmanship and theoretical positions while experimenting with a variety of themes and different modes of expression. When he burst onto the international architectural scene with a solo exhibition and accompanying catalogue (Lebbeus Woods: Origins) at the Architectural Association, London, in 1985, some wondered how anyone could emerge so fully formed, from nowhere. Working against the logic of ‘nowhere’, this issue charts his early trajectory through the largely unpublished drawings and texts, linking them with what came after. Aiming to generate new scholarship, its roster of international interdisciplinary critics and commentators offer a new understanding of Woods’s work and of his formative years, also shining a light on how we might think about the ‘early work’ of any architect’s career. Contributors: Joseph Becker, Aaron Betsky, Peter Cook, Mark Dorrian, Riet Eeckhout, Kevin Erickson, Joerg Gleiter, Sharon Irish, Eliyahu Keller, Lawrence Rinder, Ashley Simone, Ben Sweeting.