Gae Aulenti, Lebbeus Woods – Passing of Two Architects

  • Gae Aulenti
    (photo via)

    Gae Aulenti, Musée d’Orsay Architect, Dies at 84

    Gae Aulenti, a provocative Italian architect and designer who most notably converted a Paris train station into the Musée d’Orsay, died on Wednesday at her home in Milan.

  • Lebbeus Woods 1940-2012

    Lebbeus Woods died this morning at the age of 72. Woods was
    an anomaly in the contemporary architecture scene, producing
    work almost exclusively in the form of architectural
    drawings (in great volume) and sustaining a distinctive
    reputation as a visionary who, by inhabiting the lofty
    theoretical stratosphere of imagining over constructing
    buildings– a space so distanced from the vitiating
    constraints of capital — remained something of an
    uncorrupted, almost sanctified presence in the field. –Alan Sondheim (via netbehaviour)

    The Super Splice

    Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms. I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, no “sacred and primordial site.” I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments, and forms that appear with infinite strength, then “melt into air.” I am an architect, a constructor of worlds, a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky. I cannot know your name. Nor you can know mine. Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.

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    Lebbeus Woods, radical architect,LA Obit

  • Without Walls: An Interview with Lebbeus Woods (Bee’s Architecture blog)