Life and Death of Objects : Autobiography of a Design Project

Rethinking the fundamentals of planning

Lars Lerup's conceptual explorations as a designer and thinker have been inspired by philosophers and artists from Foucault to Beckett. Lerup's furniture designs elude consumer culture. They conform neither to what is commonly understood as useful nor to what is typically regarded as necessary. They question the assumed functions of furniture and, at the same time, their assigned place in space. His pieces interrogate their roles and positions and introduce a disturbing or at least disconcerting note to conventional floor plans.

This autobiography of a design project is about rendering visible the consumerism that is driving the current economically motivated expansion of our cities, and dealing with the consequences for the environment and society.

Lars Lerup is the Harry K. and Albert K. Smith Professor of Architecture and the Dean Emeritus at Rice School of Architecture, Houston Texas and Professor Emeritus of University of California at Berkeley.  He was awarded Doctor honoris causa in technology by Lund University, Sweden in 2001.

Born in Sweden, he holds degrees in engineering (Sweden), architecture (UC Berkeley) and urban design (GSD, Harvard). Lerup has written several books: Villa Prima Facie 1976, Building the Unfinished 1977 (also published in German), Planned Assaults 1987 (also published in Chinese), After the City 2000, and some fifty essays in international magazines. His most recent book One Million Acres and No Zoning was published in 2010.

Lerup’s art and design work includes drawings, paintings, architectural projects and competitions for new towns (Taipei, Taiwan), buildings, houses (California, Texas and Switzerland) and furniture. His work has been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Zurich, Moscow and Stockholm.

Lerup was elected Swedish American by Vasa Orden in 2004. He was the Harold W. Brunner Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome 2009-10.