OnSite: Lebbeus Woods

OnSite: Lebbeus Woods presents, for the first time in the United States, Three Reconstructed Boxes (1992-3) and related architectural drawings. A visionary architect renowned for his complex drawings as was Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Antonio Sant Elia before him, Woods had a major in-depth retrospective in 2014 at The Drawing Center in SoHo. Woods has only a few full-sized, constructed, projects. These include The Light Pavilion (2011-13), a steel and glass installation embedded in the Sliced Porosity Block, an inner-city mixed-use project in Chengdu, China, designed by Steven Holl Architects. With Christoph Kumpusch a steel structure, Earthwave (2013), was built in Los Angeles, California, with SCI-Arc and Pratt students based on a 1997 drawing.

Three Reconstructed Boxes is a sculptural work with sound and video components constructed with close collaborators and by Woods himself. Although proportioned like skyscrapers, the boxes are not considered architectural models, but rather conceived as a fully built work in three parts. This is the first public exhibition of the work since its original, and only, presentation in 1993 at The Louisiana Museum near Copenhagen, Denmark.

Lebbeus Woods (b. 1940, Lansing, MI – d. 2012, New York, New York) was one of the most prominent architects of his time. Yet, while Woods called himself an architect he never received a degree in architecture nor was he ever licensed to practice architecture. His designs address cities ruined by war, such as Zagreb and Sarajevo, or damaged by nature, and political divisions of space. His imaginative, unconventional body of work has influenced filmmakers, writers, designers, and artists alike. 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. The author of nine books, he was a 1994 recipient of the Chrysler Design Award. He was a professor of architecture at the Cooper Union in New York City and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

OnSite is an intimate exhibition series in the Kantor Lobby of the Benenson Center at Art Omi that focuses on architectural experiments and the contemporary practices of architects. OnSite: Lebbeus Woods is the eighth, and last, of this solo exhibition series which began in 2016.