Lebbeus Woods: Exquisite Experiments, Early Years

American architect Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012) remains a quiet hero not only among his colleagues, but also for architectural students intrigued by the ideas and fluent beauty of his powerful graphic verve, as well as of his writing. His projects from the mid-1980s until the end of his life have been widely published. However, this AD, in collaboration with the Estate of Lebbeus Woods, explores the earlier period beginning in the late 1960s when Woodswas honing his draughtsmanship and theoretical positions while experimenting with a variety of themes and different modes of expression.

When he burst onto the international architectural scene with a solo exhibition and accompanying catalogue (Lebbeus Woods: Origins) at the Architectural Association, London, in 1985, some wondered how anyone could emerge so fully formed, from nowhere. Working against the logic of ‘nowhere’, this issue charts his early trajectory through the largely unpublished drawings and texts, linking them with what came after. Aiming to generate new scholarship, its roster of international interdisciplinary critics and commentators offer a new understanding of Woods’s work and of his formative years, also shining a light on how we might think about the ‘early work’ of any architect’s career.

Contributors: Joseph Becker, Aaron Betsky, Peter Cook, Mark Dorrian, Riet Eeckhout, Kevin Erickson, Joerg Gleiter, Sharon Irish, Eliyahu Keller, Lawrence Rinder, Ashley Simone, Ben Sweeting.

Aleksandra Wagner, Ph.D., is a Professor Emerita The New School University, Member, Training and Supervising Analyst and Faculty at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, and a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She co-edited Considering Forgiveness (2009) and Lebbeus Woods: Zagreb Free Zone Revisited (2021), and translated Lebbeus Woods, War and Architecture (1993) into Serbo-Croatian. Executor of the Estate of Lebbeus Woods.

Neil Spiller, Editor-in-Chief of AD, previously the Hawksmoor Chair of Architecture and Landscape and Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, London, where he was also Dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction and Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory. He was also a Vice-Dean and Graduate Director of Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. Neil’s previous publications include the books Educating Architects (2014), Architecture and Surrealism (2016), and How to Thrive in Architecture School―A Student Guide (2020). He has guest-edited several issues of AD.