Opening October 11 until December 1, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) will present 'Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype', an exhibition and public art installation which highlights the well-known American architect's work, including several original, rarely seen Woods drawings from private collections. Complemented by a symposium and catalog, this exhibition in the SCI-Arc Gallery and related large-scale public art installation in the Arts District’s Bloom Square, aims to demonstrate the fearless nature with which the late visionary architect and draftsman created. More information on the exhibition after the break.
When Lebbeus Woods lectured at SCI-Arc in 2003, he was introduced on stage by director Eric Owen Moss: “And finally, ‘I will forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. And I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use: Silence, exile, and cunning.’ So said Joyce’s Stephen Daedalus. I don’t know that Joyce’s goal is attainable. But it’s the most moving advocacy I know for Daedalus’ heroic aspiration. That aspiration also resonates in Lebbeus Woods’ voice. That is the Woods archetype. Silence. Exile. Cunning.”
Three blocks away from its campus in the Los Angeles Arts District, SCI-Arc will complete 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, Italy. Earthwave was one of twenty drawings that reinterpreted area buildings destroyed in the 1908 Messina earthquake. 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 will be 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 SCI-Arc Gallery component of Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype, opening October 11, will also include, 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.
Support for Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype provided by Angel City Brewery. Additional assistance provided by the MAK Center Los Angeles, LADADspace and LARABA. SCI-Arc exhibitions and public programs are made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.
Exhibition Team: Hernan Diaz Alonso, Christoph A. Kumpusch, Dwayne Oyler, Alexis Rochas
Earthwave Project Team: Adam Orlinski, Ali Fouladi, Ryan J. Simons, William Orlando, Carlos Rodriguez, Cecil Barnes, Joe Jacobson
Exhibition Period: October 11 - December 1
Installation Period: June 28 - December 1