Lebbeus Woods | Radical Reconstruction, 1997

Sarajevo: New Tissue

Sarajevo: New Tissue

Sarajevo: Scar

Sarajevo: Scab

Sarajevo: Meditations

San Francisco: Wave House

Excerpt from the essay Radical Reconstruction by Lebbeus Woods:

Twenty Tactics of a New Practice – Challenge old ideas of shaping space, thus of living. After destruction, it is not possible to immediately resume the old, disrupted ways of living. Indeed, this can only be done by regressing to them, led by the resurgence of social, political and professional institutions under whose authority they once existed. But too much has been suffered and lost, too much learned at too great a price to be quickly forgotten. The spirit of invention that makes survival possible under the extreme conditions created by destruction makes possible the new ways of living in a city that will, in a sense, always remain in a paradoxical state of destruction and construction. That the dynamics of change, were at the same time political, technological, epistemological and personal, are the ingredients of what may correctly be called a creative form of destruction in the city’s day to day existence. Rather, it elevates the “paradox” to a more complex plane of experience for everyone. The spaces of the old city were shaped to sponsor conventionality. In their damaged state, they offer an entirely new possibility for understanding the origins of both space and habitation. The architect leads the way by codifying this new understanding only in terms of space, without the fixed reference of habitation. The architect is a designer of space, not of living. The spirit of invention demanded by perpetual transformation thrives best in space shaped by its own invention.

Lebbeus Woods is widely regarded as the most exciting and original architectural visionary today. His body of theoretical work and his extraordinary drawings have served as inspiration for architects, artists and legions of students. Radical Reconstruction contains essays and projects that addresses the relationships between architecture and war, political revolution/reaction and natural disasters. These projects define new approaches to the reconstruction of buildings and urban fabric damaged by unpredictable and largely uncontrollable forces of both human and natural origin.

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Lebbeus Woods | Radical Reconstruction

Essays by: Lebbeus Woods, Aleksandra Wagner & Michael Menser

Princeton Architectural Press

1997

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Lebbeus Woods

Princeton University Press

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