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)
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.
Lebbeus Woods, radical architect,LA Obit
Without Walls: An Interview with Lebbeus Woods (Bee’s Architecture blog)