{"id":6843,"date":"2016-02-23T10:00:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T14:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/?p=6843"},"modified":"2016-02-29T16:52:26","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T20:52:26","slug":"slow-manifesto-lebbeus-woods-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/national\/2016\/02\/23\/slow-manifesto-lebbeus-woods-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – Slow Manifesto | Lebbeus Woods Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edited by Clare Jacobson, Princeton Architectural Press (2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThe purposes of this website are several \u2013 to provide access to my projects and writings that are not published elsewhere, to provide a means of publishing new works in a form increasingly available to all possibly interested in them, and to create a forum for discussing the issues and ideas raised by this work. The present moment is lacking architecture discourse, generally. In particular, there is an absence of criticism of works and ideas, and that \u2013 at a time of critical changes of every kind \u2013 is not good enough.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Lebbeus Woods, from his introductory blog<\/p>\n

In Italo Calvino\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/a><\/em>, a fictitious narrative told by Marco Polo, the explorer recounts his visits to fantastical cities that defy description, despite his best efforts to try and summon them in our mind’s eye. The architecture of these cities could be one way to describe the work of the late Lebbeus Woods<\/a>, especially so for his writing on architecture. What most may not realize, is that, for the last five years of his life, he posted regularly to his own WordPress blog space at\u00a0www.lebbeuswoods.net<\/a>.\u00a0The site\u00a0remains active\u00a0to this day, with all the original posts.<\/p>\n

Slow Manifesto | Lebbeus Woods Blog, <\/em>a\u00a0new book<\/a>\u00a0featuring a selected number of posts from\u00a0his blog published by\u00a0Princeton Architectural Press and edited by Clare Jacobson, provides a fitting last testament for this great mind that we lost in 2012. While the editor admits to not having followed the blog while Woods was alive, despite having edited several of his books, the 300 plus entries he made between 2007 and 2012 provide more than enough material. As such, 150 selected by Jacobson, also a friend of the late architect and artist, provide his musings on an astonishing range of topics\u2014from the state of architectural criticism to his thoughts on the activities of his contemporary starchitects.<\/p>\n

Mr. Woods is, of course, more known for what he never built, and for what he said about it afterwards. His reconstruction sketches of Sarajevo, done while he was covering the conflict there in 1993, are perhaps his most compelling work, and are in the book represented in a blog post called \u2018The Reality of Theory<\/em>.\u2019 As he himself says in the post, \u201cMy answer was that architecture, as a social and primarily constructive act, could heal the wounds by creating entirely new types of space in the city.\u201d That he is fighting the good fight for architecture is the recurring theme in the book, whether he is commenting on the housing crash in 2008 in \u2018Bad Faith<\/em>,\u2019 or recalling his then new vision for the World Trade Centre site in the \u2018Locus of Memory<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

Despite the omission of the blogosphere’s commentary from the book, which the editor understandably had to cut for its sheer volume, the day-to-day elocutions of Mr. Woods are nothing short of miraculous\u2014an architectural equivalent to Zarathustra<\/a> (and he tips his hat to Nietzsche early in one of his musings). They are concise\u00a0in their brevity \u2013 each about a page in length \u2013 hitting the nail squarely on the head, whether he is taking care of business talking about the corporatization of architecture in the US, or deliberating on a series of drawings he pulled from his archives, reflecting on the long contemplation to conclude their creative arc.<\/p>\n

There are also unabashed and unapologetic blogs here, as one would expect, with a ten year observation post-911 in which he expresses his disappointment with Daniel Libeskind<\/a>\u2019s unbuilt scheme for the World Trade Centre site, along with SOM<\/a>‘s tower that was actually built. As a resident of New York, he wrote on the multiple associations between the destruction he witnessed in Sarajevo with the devastation of 911, and for this\u2014and other reasons\u2014many of his blogs look at the relationship between war and architecture.<\/p>\n

But as heavy as he can be, there are also whimsical moments, including a short essay on the sidewalks of New York called \u2018Common Ground<\/em>,\u2019 in which he lovingly describes the details of their patina, including their black gum spots. He riffs on podium-towers in \u2018Tower Space<\/em>\u2019 and box stores in \u2018Dumb Boxes<\/em>.’ The blog is as well a personal confessional for him, as in \u2018Why I Became an Architect<\/em>,\u2019 along with his admittance that his practice for ten years took place on a space of ten by fifteen centimeters, i.e. his sketchbook. The resultant, of course, must constitute a small city itself, and some of the pages from his notebooks are presented here in Slow Manifesto<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the blog for which the book is titled, he is at his most poetic and Zarathustra-like, as though shouting it from a mountaintop, with a language that could be used to describe one of this drawings: \u201cThe new city demands an architecture writhing, twisted, rising, and pinioned to the uncertain moment, but not martyred or sentimental, or pathetic, the coldness of its surface resisting all comfort.\u201d Each proposition for what architecture should do in his narrative becomes more fantastic than the previous, much like Marco Polo’s descriptions of the cities he’s visited in Invisible Cities<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other highlights include his \u2018Architecture School<\/em>\u2019 series, along with an essay on the release of Ai Weiwei<\/a>, and one on\u00a0Einstein\u2019s passing in which he proposes a commemorative satellite and cenotaph,\u00a0\u00e0 la Boullee<\/a>, to orbit the earth.<\/p>\n

In \u2018Haunted<\/em>\u2019 he discusses the death of the modern American Dream, musing on a photographers\u2019 depiction of such common spaces as gas stations and convenience stores in unflattering light: \u201cThese are not places where we like to be. Yet they are here, ostensibly for us. They are intended to welcome us yet they do not. We enter these places reluctantly, only from necessity. Then we leave as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there is one criticism of the book, it is that it should have devoted as much space to his visual work (i.e. his sketches) in addition to his writing, \u00a0There are only a few pages that do not have text on them, and while the point of the book is to provide a sampling of his blog (which is also available for free on the internet), it does the book a small disservice to not have more than a handful of small black and white reproductions of his sketches, especially as they were so integral to his architectural practice. Other than this and the already mentioned absence of the commentary, the book is flawless.<\/p>\n

With an introduction by architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne, who notes \u201cwriting was a way for Woods to fill what he saw as a significant vacuum in architecture criticism,\u201d Clare Jacobson has done an honourable job of presenting the architect\u2019s final thoughts, noting that there will never again be one quite like him. As he himself points out time and again in his blog, now more than ever we need clear-headed thinkers to riff on our built environments, lest those same voices are overpowered by the roar of our information age.<\/p>\n

His voice, among the chatter of the web to provide the catalyst for discussing\u00a0 what our cities should and could be, is already sadly missed, and while this voice in the internet ether may have been silenced, Slow Manifesto<\/a><\/em> provides us with an inspirational call-to-arms for architects, planners, and academics to make sure we keep prodding at the conventional and banish complacency. Thank you Mr. Woods!<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

For more information on\u00a0Slow Manifesto | Lebbeus Woods Blog<\/strong> visit the Princeton Architectural Press website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

Sean Ruthen<\/a> <\/em><\/strong>is a Metro Vancouver-based architect and writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edited by Clare Jacobson, Princeton Architectural Press (2015) \u00a0\u201cThe purposes of this website are several \u2013 to provide access to my projects and writings that are not published elsewhere, to provide a means of publishing new works in a form increasingly available to all possibly interested in them, and to create a forum for discussingContinue reading “Book Review – Slow Manifesto | Lebbeus Woods Blog”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6014,"featured_media":6868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBook Review - 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