Profiles of Designers Off the Beaten Path: John Peterson and Lebbeus Woods

A quick couple of interesting profiles to share. First from the Boston Globe about John Peterson's non-profit firm Public Architecture, which bucked the trend on the path to starchitecture by going after clients with needs instead of money and have begun building an empire of goodness, employing a real, observable method of using design for social justice, instead of just talking about it or building mega-yachts. Here's a bit: ...what Public Architecture and groups like it are after is also distinctly new. They are challenging their entire profession to take the high design standards usually reserved for elite clients and systematically deliver them to society's most vulnerable: to design hospital rooms that give the chronically ill a sense of control over their lives, libraries that will make children spend hours with a book, or simple structures that grant working immigrants new dignity. In other words, to convince ordinary people and those on the margins that architects don't just make giant, radical shapes. They can make giant, radical change. The second is far more quiet and insular. It's the NY Times profile on Lebbeus Woods, the cult figure in design and architecture who would have Frank Gehry's career in unusual projects if anyone would build anything he had designed or if he had any real interest in his ideas being built in the first place. Instead, he seems relatively happy creating countless renderings of brilliant structures that will likely never see the light of day (save for selections in the "Dreamland" exhibition on now at the MoMA). Here's a bit: Architecture is big business today. While most of his friends and colleagues have abandoned their imaginary cities to chase lucrative commissions, Mr. Woods has shown little interest in building. Instead he continues to work at a small drafting table in a corner of his downtown apartment, a solitary, monklike figure churning out increasingly abstract architectural fantasies...

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Profiles of Designers Off the Beaten Path: John Peterson and Lebbeus Woods

Steve Delahoyde

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Steve Delahoyde