TMA! Book Review: ANARCHITECTURE by Lebbeus Woods (1992) [S1:E6]
Video posted on June 30, 2015 on YouTube.
ANARCHITECTURE is like a gateway drug; it is disorienting, exciting, beautiful and has the potential to change your life forever. That is, if you “get it.” Otherwise, it’s nothing special. Today, I am going to discuss Lebbeus Woods pivotal 1992 book, ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act, published by St. Martin’s Press as Architectural Monograph No. 22.
Like many of the high-theory books written by architects, this treatise can be downright illegible. Made-up words, confusing programs and fictional clients are all on the page. Worse than Woods, architects that include Rem Koolhaas and John Hejduk don’t even provide good renderings.
That, my friends, is what makes this book special. The renderings are truly sublime, with both wonder & downright fear in many of the detailed lines. Who lives above? Sniper? Madness? A lonely parent waiting for her child? All are possible but unlikely; the space is largely abandoned, a pre-civilization failure or post-apocalyptic shell waiting for re-tooling. Beautiful? Yes. Daring? Yes. Appropriate for human habitation? Probably not. This very fact is that which pushes the work beyond revolution to radical expression.
But I do not believe the purpose of the book is to frustrate the very purpose of architecture. Rather, he wishes to reset the designer’s expectations. To disengage from the impotent industry he is so well equipped to serve. A genius of the pen, Woods decides to devote himself, starting formally with this book, to experimental discourse.
Important here is Wood’s willingness to burn bridges. In other words, he is ready to bald-face call out an intrinsic corruption that ruins the integrity of most construction. Not so much the influence of money, or simply superior resources of the building protagonist. Rather, it is the enabled politics of the client, a politics not of democratic virtue, or even out-right fascist determination; but a politics of some subliminal type. Buildings hold space and time for a community of users. It’s a terminal state, that is, until abandonment, demolition or reconfiguration.
Rather than reconstruct, Woods aligns with other critical theorists advocating reterritorialization. To do so is to identify the political power of the ‘brick & mortar’ place, define its appropriate purpose & expression, and elect the agent for execution. Seems simple, but to read his treatise, it is nothing less than byzantine.
This book, at is core, is a beautiful mess. It is a collection of Wood’s work at his peak. Although in later years his writing gets dramatically better, more coherent; this is the prime of his conceptual and demonstrated animation. When I have heard him speak, and when I have read this text, I feel as though I am learning directly from a sort of “man in black” with the pedigree of an outsider but the talents of a master. Usually these sorts become the bad guy. But here, in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act Woods is playing the martyr; sacrificing a career for his beliefs, to identify the rotten foundation of his chosen trade, and to commit the remainder of his life to directly addressing this abyss of professional character with a dark hope, a hint of soothsayer’s madness, and starting here, a constant dialogue based in experimental design expression.
