Woods passed away in 2012, and this two-part collection of drawings and sketches represents a powerful postwar critique of architecture and a radical reimagining of the urban environment.
After a long career as a radical, inventive architectural designer, the materials will provide scholars and researchers valuable insight on a theoretical architect known for detailed renderings that serve as striking statements of his philosophy.
The GRI has acquired 46 drawings for Lebbeus Woods's A-City and 4 Cities and Beyond projects (ca. 1982–1997) establish a distopian vision for an alternate world.
Though fragmentary, each drawing with its beguiling pen and ink as well as their color pencil visions, put on display the totality of Woods’s urbanistic fantasies, constituting a conceptual masterplan for the projects' development.
In addition, the Getty Research Institution has recently received a donation of 6 more drawings belonging to the series A-City, making the series complete.
A 30-page sketchbook that Woods kept during one of his many visits to Los Angeles illustrates both the architect's working process and, through handwritten notes, his various lines of thinking on the city and on the production of cinema-stage representations.
With these acquisitions, the Getty Research Institute is the largest repository for Lebbeus Woods’ theoretical thinking.
Both the collections of drawings and the sketchbook are complemented by two significant holdings already in the GRI’s special collections: Lebbeus Woods Drawings for the Berlin Free Zone Project (1990) and Lebbeus Woods Journals, 1988–1997.
After a long career as a radical, inventive architectural designer, the materials will provide scholars and researchers valuable insight on a theoretical architect known for detailed renderings that serve as striking statements of his philosophy.
The GRI has acquired 46 drawings for Lebbeus Woods's A-City and 4 Cities and Beyond projects (ca. 1982–1997) establish a distopian vision for an alternate world.
Though fragmentary, each drawing with its beguiling pen and ink as well as their color pencil visions, put on display the totality of Woods’s urbanistic fantasies, constituting a conceptual masterplan for the projects' development.
In addition, the Getty Research Institution has recently received a donation of 6 more drawings belonging to the series A-City, making the series complete.
A 30-page sketchbook that Woods kept during one of his many visits to Los Angeles illustrates both the architect's working process and, through handwritten notes, his various lines of thinking on the city and on the production of cinema-stage representations.
With these acquisitions, the Getty Research Institute is the largest repository for Lebbeus Woods’ theoretical thinking.
Both the collections of drawings and the sketchbook are complemented by two significant holdings already in the GRI’s special collections: Lebbeus Woods Drawings for the Berlin Free Zone Project (1990) and Lebbeus Woods Journals, 1988–1997.
