Lebbeus Woods, No Title, 1990, Courtesy of Blythe and Thom Mayne
© Estate of Lebbeus Woods

SCI-Arc Gallery
October 11–December 1, 2013
October 11, 7pm: Exhibition Opening Reception & Symposium with Hernan Diaz Alonso, Christoph a. Kumpusch, Dwayne Oyler and Alexis Rochas

Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype includes an exhibition in the SCI-Arc Gallery and a public art installation in the Arts District's Bloom Square, both aiming to demonstrate the fearless nature with which the late visionary architect and draftsman created. It is assembled by an exhibition team including SCI-Arc graduate programs chair Hernan Diaz Alonso, Christoph A. Kumpusch, and design faculty Dwayne Oyler and Alexis Rochas.

The SCI-Arc Gallery component ofLebbeus Woods is an Archetype, opening October 11, will include several original, rarely seen Woods drawings from private collections, and 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.

Earthwave Installation
Designed by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph a. Kumpusch
June 28 – December 1, 2013
On view at Traction Triangle at Bloom Square
The intersection of Traction Avenue, Rose and East 3rd Streets, Los Angeles, CA 90013

Three blocks away from its campus in downtown Los Angeles, SCI-Arc completed 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 (BaaM), Italy. Earthwave was initially designed by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph a. Kumpusch in collaboration with Adam Orlinski, and is based on a Lebbeus Woods drawing from 1997. It is an installation that proves to a new generation that there is a fine line between "unbuilt" and "unbuildable." The temporary 18’x 18’, two-and-a-half-ton steel structure built by SCI-Arc was 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 is 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.

Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype, Earthwave Installation, SCI-Arc, 2013

The site of the project—a busy walkable intersection in downtown L.A.'s Arts Distric—frees it from being perceived as an object to be viewed from a distance and transforms the structure into a metric of urbanity meant to be freely moved through.

Installation Team
CaK_LAB is the experimental arm of Forward Slash (/) the multidisciplinary, New York-based office headed by architect Christoph a. Kumpusch. Within this domain, the office investigates technology and material effects on form and tectonics. The office is both a design and publishing outfit, producing a number of essays, books, exhibitions, podcasts, and films. Kumpusch holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Technology from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He is a Professor of Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) and at Pratt Institute. The recently completed Light Pavilion at the Sliced Porosity Block by Steven Holl Architects in Chengdu, China, is one of several projects in over a decade of collaboration between Kumpusch and Lebbeus Woods.

Project team
Adam Orlinski, Ali Fouladi, Ryan J. Simons, William Orlando, Carlos Rodriguez, Cecil Barnes, Joe Jacobson

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SCI-Arc exhibitions and public programs are made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.

Lebbeus Woods Is An Archetype is supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Additional support for Lebbeus Woods is an Archetype is generously provided by the estate of Lebbeus Woods, Friedman Benda, Blythe and Thom Mayne, and Christoph a. Kumpusch.

Additional assistance provided by the MAK Center Los Angeles, LADADspace, LARABA, and Angel City Brewery. 

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