Lebbeus Woods American, 1940-2012

Lebbeus Woods (1940-2012) was an American architect and architectural theorist. Woods trained at Purdue University (engineering) and University of Illinois (architecture) and worked in the offices of Eero Saarinen & Associates / Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates and in private practice. Anticipating the future needs of human civilization in face of political upheavals, his building designs are viewed as organisms that are dynamic and responsive to the surrounding changes. Rendered through intricate ink, color pencil and pastel drawings, as well as digital renderings and models, his works are in private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MAK, Vienna, and the Getty Research Institute for the Arts and Humanities, among others. For over two decades, Woods taught at the Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. He received the Progressive Architecture Award for Design Research, Institute Honor of the American Academy of Architects, Daimler-Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, and the Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2013, a retrospective, “Lebbeus Woods, Architect,” was curated by SF MoMA, and subsequently traveled to Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, and to Drawing Center, New York City.