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The Storm and the Fall
By any measure, Lebbeus Woods is one of the most original architects working today. His body of theoretical work focuses on buildings of crisis, whether marred by major earthquakes, suffering the effects of economic embargo, or damaged by war. Since the destruction of the World Trade Center, his designs have taken on new meaning and significance. In The Storm and the Fall , Woods brings his visions to a new depth, moving them from feverishly rendered drawings to three-dimensional space.
The book focuses on two recent Woods installations - one at the Houghton Gallery at New York's Cooper Union, the other at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris - that address the role of today's architecture. The Storm critiques the geometric box that rules most building designs and proposes instead a dynamic field of potential energy, represented by a complex array of vectors. The Fall crystallizes a built space in the midst of collapse, witnessing a moment too brief to inhabit - except in imagination. Both pieces are explored in Woods's powerful sketches, renderings, models, and constructions, exposing the mutations that enable them to be. A postscript of his hopeful design for a new World Center relates even more of his ideas, and essays by Anthony Vidler and Paul Virilio offer insights into the significance of the work.
The book focuses on two recent Woods installations - one at the Houghton Gallery at New York's Cooper Union, the other at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris - that address the role of today's architecture. The Storm critiques the geometric box that rules most building designs and proposes instead a dynamic field of potential energy, represented by a complex array of vectors. The Fall crystallizes a built space in the midst of collapse, witnessing a moment too brief to inhabit - except in imagination. Both pieces are explored in Woods's powerful sketches, renderings, models, and constructions, exposing the mutations that enable them to be. A postscript of his hopeful design for a new World Center relates even more of his ideas, and essays by Anthony Vidler and Paul Virilio offer insights into the significance of the work.
- GenresArchitecture
189 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2004
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About the author
Lebbeus Woods
49 books29 followersLebbeus Woods was an American architect and artist.
Woods studied architecture at the University of Illinois and engineering at Purdue University and first worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen, but in 1976 turned exclusively to theory and experimental projects. He has designed buildings in Chengdu, China and Havana, Cuba. In 1988, Woods co-founded the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, a nonprofit institution devoted to the advancement of experimental architectural thought and practice while promoting the concept and perception of architecture itself.
He was a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators. He is best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo that were included in the publication of Radical Reconstruction in 1997 (Sarajevo after the war, Havana in the grips of the ongoing trade embargo, and San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake).
"Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city."
Woods, who envisioned experimental constructs and environments, has stated, "the interplay of metrical systems establishing boundaries of materials and energetic forms is the foundation of a universal science (universcience) whose workers include all individuals"
Woods studied architecture at the University of Illinois and engineering at Purdue University and first worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen, but in 1976 turned exclusively to theory and experimental projects. He has designed buildings in Chengdu, China and Havana, Cuba. In 1988, Woods co-founded the Research Institute for Experimental Architecture, a nonprofit institution devoted to the advancement of experimental architectural thought and practice while promoting the concept and perception of architecture itself.
He was a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
The majority of his explorations deal with the design of systems in crisis: the order of the existing being confronted by the order of the new. His designs are politically charged and provocative visions of a possible reality; provisional, local, and charged with the investment of their creators. He is best known for his proposals for San Francisco, Havana, and Sarajevo that were included in the publication of Radical Reconstruction in 1997 (Sarajevo after the war, Havana in the grips of the ongoing trade embargo, and San Francisco after the Loma Prieta earthquake).
"Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no "sacred and primordial site." I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then "melt into air." I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city."
Woods, who envisioned experimental constructs and environments, has stated, "the interplay of metrical systems establishing boundaries of materials and energetic forms is the foundation of a universal science (universcience) whose workers include all individuals"
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