Lebbeus Woods drawings and Sketchbook are acquired by the Getty
18/01/2020.
[LA] USA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
metalocus, JOSÉ JUAN BARBA
The Getty Research Institute (GRI) in Los Angeles has acquired a two-part collection of drawings and sketches by visionary architect Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012).
The GRI’s architectural holdings are especially strong in 20th-century avant-garde architects such as Lebbeus Woods.
The GRI’s architectural holdings are especially strong in 20th-century avant-garde architects such as Lebbeus Woods.
Drawing for A-City, Lebbeus Woods, ca. 1985–1986. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.24. Acquired with partial support of the GRI Council. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods
Selection from the Los Angeles sketchbook, Lebbeus Woods, 1986–1988. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.25. Gift of The Woods Edge Partnership. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods
Selection from the Los Angeles sketchbook, Lebbeus Woods, 1986–1988. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.25. Gift of The Woods Edge Partnership. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods
Selection from the Los Angeles sketchbook, Lebbeus Woods, 1986–1988. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.25. Gift of The Woods Edge Partnership. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods
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.
More information
LEBBEUS WOODS
Lebbeus Woods was born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1940. The son of an accomplished military engineer, Woods studied at the Purdue University School of Engineering (1958–60) and the University of Illinois School of Architecture (1960–64). He worked with Kevin Roche at Eero Saarinen and Associates before turning decisively (1964–68), in the mid-1970s, to independent, conceptual work staged through drawings, models, and installations.
He co-founded the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture and is a Professor of Architecture at the Cooper Union, where taught until his death in 2012, as well as a lecturer at the European Graduate School. The author of many books and subject of many exhibitions worldwide, his writings and drawings have inspired architects, film directors, story-writers, and dreamers of all kinds.
Woodsʼ drawings are held in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Carnegie Museum of Modern Art; the Getty Research Institute; and the Museum für angewandte Kunst (MAK), Vienna.
Woods's projects and writing can also be explored in the archives of his blog at lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com.
