Zagreb Free-Zone, 1991. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods

It’s a sad coincidence that a new show devoted to Lebbeus Woods will open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art so soon after the architect’s death last fall. “He was working with us on the exhibition before he passed away in October,” recalls Joseph Becker, assistant curator of architecture and design at the museum. Yet the show’s strange timing somehow befits an architect who so often took disaster and destruction as an entry point.

“Lebbeus Woods, Architect,” which opens February 16 and runs through June 2, gathers 175 pieces from the past 35 years. The mostly small works on paper track Woods’s evolution from drawing fictional cities (like his “Centricity” series from the 1980s) to imagining politically free zones in divided Berlin or war-torn Zagreb. His later abstractions, from the late ’90s and 2000s, refocus on the concept of space itself. “For Woods it seems that the real basis of architecture is the idea of the question,” says Becker, who co-curated the show with Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, acting department head and assistant curator of architecture and design. “What if we lived by a different set of rules, ones that didn’t have, for example, governing agencies that dictate how buildings could stand up or not, or even gravity and physical limitations that dictate the specific kind of architecture we must live with?” Read more.

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Photo: Hufton + Crow

Steven Holl has completed his latest, and some might say, most significant project in China. The Sliced Porosity Block, or “CapitaLand Raffles City Chengdu”—we can’t decide which is hokier—was recently opened, ushering in a new type of architecture for one of China’s fastest growing cities. Located in the heart of Chengdu, the dense three million square-foot complex creates a completely novel public space that’s hemmed in by five residential/office towers. The scheme, which flips the generic tower-and-podium typology on its head, differentiates itself from other nearby urban projects by privileging public space over exuberant form and material-wasting showmanship. Click through for more images.

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“Manifesto,” by Lebbeus Woods, 1993

The great artist and architect Lebbeus Woods, who died last week, was best known for his stunning futuristic illustrations, which inspired countless designers, writers, filmmakers, and dreamers to imagine a world outside the ordinary. Even though his work was mostly relegated to paper, Woods’ amazing drawings had us thinking of other great sketches and the buildings they spawned. So in tribute, we’ve compiled illustrations of projects we have recently featured on the site, along with photos of the completed structures! (And we’ve thrown in a couple awesome bonuses too.) Click through to see them all, and be sure to share your favorites in the comment section below!

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Lebbeus Woods, “Einstein Tomb” (1980)

Some sad news: Visionary architect and artist Lebbeus Woods has passed away at the age of 72. New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman tweeted the shocking announcement this morning saying: “Deeply sorry to have just heard that Lebbeus Woods, a true visionary architect and astonishing draftsman, died this morning. A great loss.” He would later write that Woods had been “fading for some months, sadly, but he kept teaching to the end”, and that he had died in his sleep. Continue.

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A slide from Woods’ introductory lecture in ARCHITECTONICS,  First Year Studio at The Cooper Union.

Recently, we have been dwelling quite a bit on the ills of architecture school and the unspoken practices of the profession itself, much of which has painted a grim picture of a field that has often hinged itself on its distinct and determined enlightenment. Whether in response to the recent surge of doubt or not, admired architect, artist and avid blogger Lebbeus Woods recently released a two-part expose on why he became an architect. Woods’ intimate prose is a love letter to the arts; absent are the 71-year-old architect’s musings on buildings and bridges or ruminations on masterpieces of engineering and design. Instead, the seed that germinated the architect’s inclination to call himself an architect sprung from a youthful fascination with engravings, frescoes, oil paintings, and the artistic conception of divinity, salvation and light.

Woods recalls spending his childhood painting and also, significantly, leafing through images of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel in Life Magazine and staring in awe at Gustave Doré’s 19th century engravings of Dante’s Inferno. He began to contemplate lightness and darkness and the “inexhaustible source of affecting ideas” that emerged from Western faith and its accompanying explosion of artistic renderings. As he writes in Part 1, his ideas and early fascinations have crystallized in retrospect: “[T]he arts have not been merely ornamental, but central to people’s struggle to ‘find themselves’ in a world without clarity, or certainty, of meaning. The very different worlds of Dante and Michelangelo testify equally to this condition, and led me slowly, inevitably towards architecture.” Read on.

Gustave Doré‘s illustrations date from the latter 19th Century of the Roman poet Virgil leading Dante to the Inferno. As Woods explained, above the opening to the Inferno is inscribed “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

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Images courtesy of Lebbeus Woods

Visionary architect, artist, and avid blogger Lebbeus Woods recently came across a 1970s pattern book of the old city of Prague. Comparing it to a dressmaker’s pattern book, Woods admired the pages of colorful, abstract forms, each one meant to be meticulously cut out and then assembled with the others into a three-dimensional paper model. More after the jump!

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“Cities” is a series of drawings by Atelier Olschinsky, depicting fantastical, fictional urbanisms that have more in common with sci-fi than with existing cities. The drawings after the jump.

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The Light Pavilion by Lebbeus Woods in collaboration with Christoph a. Kumpusch, in the Raffles City complex in Chengdu, China, by Steven Holl Architects. Image via Lebbeus Woods.

“I here state publicly that I will not accept another project in China until Ai Weiwei is released unharmed from detention or imprisonment.”

- That’s Lebbeus Woods, referring to the ongoing detention of Chinese activist Ai Weiwei, who was taken into custody on April 31. More>>

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While Slate ponders whether computers have made architects less disciplined, Renzo Piano reminds us “you still need nine months, not nine weeks, to make a baby.” [via Slate]

Qatar officials announced this week they would use artificial clouds ( $500,000 carbon structured helium balloons) to provide shade for events during the 2012 World Cup. [via DailyMail]

“A tectonic collaboration between Lebbeus Woods and Jackson Pollack,” writes Geoff Manaugh describing artist Gerry Judah‘s post-apocalyptic 3-D paintings. [via DesignCo]

Critics argue the ultra-green LEED-certified development proposal by U2 musician The Edge in Malibu would be even greener if it didn’t exist, adding to the growing discussion of the insignificance of LEED. [via mediabistro]

The New York Times interviews Post-Modern architect Michael Graves on his new line of products for Target. [via NYTimes]

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