Weekly Alibi, Albuquerque, Sept 2 1997
As an architect, Lebbeus Woods may never hit it big. But as an artist, he sure is hard to knock down. Woods has developed a cult following in recent years becasue of his apocalyptic vision, and, in Radical Reconstruction, he illustrates this vision with three projects set in areas of utter destruction: war-torn Sarajevo, bankrupt Havana, quake-ravaged San Francisco Harbor.... Over the course of 200 drawings, Woods's outlook becomes painfully clear, all sharp angles and impractical spaces. And you can see why--with the mind of a sci-fi writer and the eye of a comic book artist--he has become an underground hero of American architecture."
Neil Spiller, Architectural Design
Radical Reconstruction is an apt title. It takes us on a journey -- some paths are implied, some are explicit --that questions and reformulates architecture's constituent parts. One by one meaning, function, representation, abstraction, et al, are run through the mill and recast within the contexts of war and cataclysmic social and physical fracture... This book is a critique against the rhetoric of reductivism and minimalism. This is 'full on' maximist architecture. It is an acknowledgement that the practice of architecture exists within a beautiful complexity.
