Book – OneFiveFour: Light, Matter and Energy

What is the material architecture is made of? Is it concret, glass and steel? Mortar, bricks and timber Stone, fabrics and plastic? All of them or none of them? So many different ways of putting this, but there must be something just beyond the physicality of the materiality of architecture, something that holds it together and creates an atmosphere as the sum of all pieces.

For Lebbeus Woods architecture is in essence light, mater and energy put in combination, mastering the elements spatially. He is mainly interested in geometry and light, where geometri is the relationship between light, matter and energy, in reference to Einstein’s E/m=c2.

Image taken from the Fun Ambulist / Lebbeus Woods project Berlin Underground.

In a 2011 reprint of the 1989 publication oneFiveFour by Lebbeus Woods and published by Princeton Architecture Press some of Woods’ projects are showcased. Foremost, these are A. City, Centricity and Berlin UNderground. It’s a beautiful black and white print of projects, sketches and writings unveiling an, at times, futuristic or star wars like scenery of buildings, as a vison for a city. There is a lot of movement in the sketches implying a strong sense of process and making. Most of the elements are partially finished, waiting to be extended and developed further. It’s a sort of invitation. Woods is not proposing those structures as static objects everything is in the making, on offer for collaboration?

Image taken from the Fun Ambulist / Lebbeus Woods project.

Image taken from the Fun Ambulist / Book Cover OneFiveFour.

Woods, L., 1989. One Five Four, New York, N.Y: Princeton Architectural Press.