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 Working against the logic of ‘nowhere’, this issue charts his early trajectory through the largely unpublished drawings and texts, linking them with what came after.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.
Table of Contents
About the Editors 5
Neil Spiller and Aleksandra Wagner
Introduction 6
A Fecund Lucidity
Spadework for a Palace
Neil Spiller and Aleksandra Wagner
Self-Portrait with Burned Weapon 14
The Wound That Does Not Heal
Mark Dorrian
Inventing the World 22
In and Around Illinois, 1960-75
Sharon Irish
From Experimental Epistemology to Experimental Architecture 30
Ben Sweeting
Framing the Sky, Etching Clay 38
Walls of the Midwest
Kevin Erickson
Lebbeus - A Postmodernist? 48
Early Scenes of Shopping and Dwelling
Aaron Betsky
Attuned Rigour 58
Between Pictorial and Material Conditions
Riet Eeckhout
Magical Transubstantiations 68
A Voyage to Italy
Aleksandra Wagner and Neil Spiller
Myth and Measure 74
Drawings of the 1970s
Lawrence Rinder
Post-Apocalypse 84
The 'Ring' Cycle
Jörg H Gleiter
In Place of Light 92
On Early Writings
Eliyahu Keller
Polymorphic Matters 102
Architecture, Change and Imagination
Ashley Simone
Exit Velocity 110
Einstein Tomb
Joseph Becker
Catalytic Moments, Friendships and Journeys 118
Peter Cook
'The notion of "early years" - a search for modes of thought and for techniques that would make such thoughts readable - has an aura of excitement and discovery, combined with a youthful productivity of output' - Neil Spiller and Aleksandra Wagner
From Another Perspective
The Samizdats 128
Subversive Polemic
Neil Spiller
Contributors 134
