SFMOMA Planning Posthumous Lebbeus Woods Exhibition
Urban Field, 1987. (Courtesy SFMOMA)
Just weeks after architect Lebbeus Woods’ death at age 72, SFMOMA is getting the word out about a new exhibition of his work that will run from February 16th through June 2nd, 2013. The show, entitled Lebbeus Woods, Architect, will feature 75 pieces from the eccentric designer’s portfolio—most of them mutating forms in pencil— including Nine Reconstructed Boxes (1999) and High Houses (1996), which are currently in the SFMOMA collection. From SFMOMA’s exhibition description:
Acknowledging the parallels between society’s physical and psychological constructions, architect Lebbeus Woods (1940 – 2012) depicted a career-long narrative of how these constructions transform our being. Working mostly with pencil on paper, Woods created an oeuvre of complex worlds—at times abstract and at times explicit—that present shifts, cycles, and repetitions within the built environment. His timeless architecture is not in a particular style or in response to a singular moment in the field; rather, it offers an opportunity to consider how built forms are transformative for the individual and the collective, and how one person contributes to the development and mutation of the built world.
See more images from the museum’s impressive Woods’ collection below.
Lebbeus Woods Leaves a Legacy of Thought Archived Online
Raimund Abraham and Lebbeus Woods have a discussion in a monk’s cell at La Tourette.
The outpouring of positive and thoughtful reflections by architects around the world to the passing of Lebbeus Woods on social networking sites has been gratifying to those who long recognized his importance to contemporary culture. We will have an obituary by Peter Cook in the next print edition of the paper but a Woods fan Carlos Brillembourg brought a fascinating talk between Raimund Abraham and Woods to our attention. In fact Woods’ Blog was one of the most compelling architecture sites on the web and if you have never read it do yourself a favor and spend a few hours reading his posts.
On View> Field Conditions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Lebbeus Woods’ Conflict Space 3, 2006. (Lebbeus Woods)
Field Conditions
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street, San Francisco, CA
Through January 6, 2013
Blurring the distinction between conceptual art and theoretical architecture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art investigates the conception and experience of space by using the notion of “field” as a reference. Curator Joseph Becker describes the pieces in the exhibition as “spatial experiments,” united by the use of architectural devices to describe a spatial condition. The term “field conditions” derives from the 1996 essay by architect Stan Allen in which he describes a shift from traditional architectural form toward an understanding of systems and networks, a “field” being described by the interconnections of discrete points that constitute the whole. Many works in the exhibition deploy a process of serializing and accumulating, describing spatial qualities through deformation (such as Conflict Space 3, 2006, by Lebbeus Woods, above).
FreelandBuck’s Slipstream Installation Hits The Auction Block
Slipstream installation at the Bridge Gallery in New York by FreelandBuck. (Courtesy FreelandBuck)
Inspired by Lebbeus Woods’ “Slipstreaming” drawing series envisioning the dynamics of flow, New York- and LA-based FreelandBuck architects designed Slipstream, a colorful installation made of CNC-cut birch-veneer plywood currently on display at New York’s Bridge Gallery through August 24. Now the sculpture could flow out of the Lower East Side gallery and into your home or apartment. Citing storage constraints, FreelandBuck has placed Slipstream on eBay and the installation—all 1,400 pieces of it—could be yours for cheap.
On View> Light Pavilion by Lebbeus Woods & Christoph A. Kumpusch
Rendering of Woods & Kumpusch's Light Pavilion. (Courtesy MAK)
Light Pavilion by Lebbeus Woods and
Christoph A. Kumpusch: Construction
Drawings & In-Process Photographs at the
Mackey Garage Top
MAK Center at the Schindler House
835 North Kings Road
West Hollywood
Through August 6
The Light Pavilion by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph A. Kumpusch was created for Steven Holl’s Sliced Porosity Block project now under construction in Chengdu, China, and will be Lebbeus Woods’ first built work of architecture. A physical intervention into Holl’s rectilinear structure, the pavilion consists of a series of columns and stairs that are illuminated from with and change color, and the luminous effect will be amplified by the pavilion’s mirrored interior walls. The MAK exhibition includes construction drawings and process photographs of the installation, as well as conceptual renderings of this project, above, and other work of Woods and Kumpusch.
Quick Clicks> Barrios, Shopping Atlantic, Blah, Egypt
A section of the barrios in Bogata from Harry Murzyn and David Varon.
Barrios with Altitude. A poetic study of the organically evolving perimeter of Bogotá, via Lebbeus Woods.
Atlantic Aspirations. Forest City Ratner is still on the hunt for Atlantic Yards funding, but has sweetened the deal by tapping SHoP–who is already spiffing up the stadium and public plaza–to design B2, the first apartment building in the complex, says The Observer.
Sterile Street. Blair Kamin calls out developer Joe Sitt for obliterating “bracing history” in exchange for “bland consistency” on State Street, in The Chicago Times.
Impromptu Planning. In Egypt, protesters have organized a mini-city in Tahir Square, complete with urban planners. Listen to an NPR audio clip or read the related transcript.
Eavesdrop NY 08
The Mark Dendy Dance Theater troupe performs outside the new North Carolina Museum of Art during its grand opening festival. (NCMA/Flickr)
BEFORE SUBZERO, REFRIGERATORS WERE WHITE (OR AVOCADO)
Eavesdrop jetted to pollen-crusted Raleigh, NC, with an eclectic herd of reporters from the likes of Sculpture magazine and The Jewish Daily Forward to tour the North Carolina Museum of Art expansion designed by Thomas Phifer. We were not disappointed. The 127,000-square-foot museum is an elegant, single-story box penetrated by courtyards, pools, and gardens. The interior and exterior details are so deliciously subtle that they seemed to elude some of the mainstream press, who asked him why he didn’t site the building to dominate the street. Articulate and precise, Phifer hypnotized the skeptics by explaining every strategy convincingly, and they hung on his every word. (Check out AN correspondent Thomas de Monchaux’s own critical appraisal in our next issue.) Read More
Raimund Abraham, Real & Imagined
The work of Raimund Abraham. CLICK TO LAUNCH SLIDESHOW
In the latest issue of the paper, Lebbeus Woods pays tribute to his friend and colleague Raimund Abraham, who died last month. Here, we gather together a survey of the visionary architect’s work, both built and—perhaps more importantly—unbuilt, for as Woods recounts of Abraham, “Building, he believed, necessarily violates nature’s wholeness, and must be done with a full awareness of consequences.” Click the image above of Abraham’s best known building, the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, to begin the slideshow. (Special thanks to Stefan Heßling for generously sharing his images of Abraham’s musikstudio in Germany.)
You can also watch Abraham’s last lecture, delivered at SCI-Arc the night of March 3. He died in a car accident on his way home.
Pre-CAD: Architects With A Sketch Pad
Frank Lloyd Wright, Cottage Studio for Ayn Rand, 1946
Rare drawings by major architects are on display at Edward Cella Art + Architecture, a new gallery at 6018 Wilshire Blvd, across from LACMA. Highlights include Frank Lloyd Wright’s sketch of an unrealized ocean-front house for Ayn Rand, the semiliterate guru of the loony right; a color pastel rendering by Richard Neutra of the Tremaine house in Montecito, and floor plans of the Empire State Building. Carlos Diniz, the LA illustrator, created a presentation drawing for Minoru Yamasaki, showing how tenants might exploit the unbroken floor plan to create an interior townscape. The most surprising feature of the exhibition is Berlin Underground, a suite of twenty drawings by Lebbeus Woods. Commisioned by the Aedes Gallery of Berlin in 1988, a year before the Wall came down, they imagined a subterranean link between the two halves of the divided city. Woods’ tortured vision evokes alien life, lurking beneath the surface and bursting into view at the Alexanderplatz. On view until October 10 and after the jump. Read More
Talk Around the Clock
Philippe Parreno, Marquee Guggeneim, NY, 2008. Photo: Kristopher McKay/Guggenheim Foundation
Listen up insomniacs and coffee snobs, the Guggenheim is hosting a 24-hour talk, appropriately on the theme of time, as a companion to the exhibition theanyspacewhatever. The event starts at 6:00 pm tonight and runs through 6:00 pm on Wednesday, and includes artists, designers, curators, social scientists, philosophers, and others. Read More
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