Lebbeus Woods Is An Archetype

Earthwave, by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph a. Kumpusch (On view June 28 – December 1, 2013)June 28, 7pm: Earthwave Installation Opening at Traction Triangle at Bloom Square (located at the intersection of Traction Avenue, Rose Street and East 3rd Street, Los Angeles)October 11, 7pm: SCI-Arc Gallery Exhibition Opening Reception & SymposiumLebbeus Woods is an Archetype includes an exhibition in the SCI-Arc Gallery and a public art installation in the L.A. Arts District's Bloom Square, both aiming to demonstrate the fearless nature with which the late visionary architect and draftsman created. It is assembled by an exhibition team including SCI-Arc graduate programs chair Hernan Diaz Alonso, Christoph A. Kumpusch, and design faculty Dwayne Oyler and Alexis Rochas.Three blocks away from its campus in downtown Los Angeles, SCI-Arc completed Woods’s Earthwave, an “inhabitable drawing” originally designed, but never built, for the 2009 Biennale of Architecture and Art of the Mediterranean in Reggio Calabria (BaaM), Italy.Earthwave was initially designed by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph a. Kumpusch in collaboration with Adam Orlinski, and is based on a Lebbeus Woods drawing from 1997. It is an installation that proves to a new generation that there is a fine line between "unbuilt" and "unbuildable." The temporary 18’x 18’, two-and-a-half-ton steel structure built by SCI-Arc is set to be unveiled on June 28. It includes four parallel steel frame “swarms,” each frame penetrated by a dense field of steel vectors, using the urban Arts District as a backdrop for Woods’s dystopian vision. The public is invited to conceptually inhabit the sculpture in a 1:1 scale, giving the piece a new dimensionality and relating back to the 2-D and 3-D nature of the project.The site of the project—a busy walkable intersection in downtown L.A.'s Arts Distric—will free it from being perceived as an object to be viewed from a distance and transform the structure into a metric of urbanity meant to be freely moved through.The SCI-Arc Gallery component of Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype, opening October 11, will include several original, rarely seen Woods drawings from private collections, and most notably, recently uncovered video footage from a 1998 interview recorded in Vico Morcote, Switzerland, then part of a SCI-Arc European campus program. The video articulates Woods’s philosophy and the forces and influences which shaped his thinking, including the work of Heinz von Foerster and the systems-thinking theory of Cybernetics. A public symposium on opening night will feature a panel of young architects who will discuss Woods’s influence on their generation.