Food for Thought: Manifesto by Lebbeus Woods
Food for Thought: Manifesto
By Lebbeus Woods
Architecture and war are not incompatible.
Architecture is war.
War is architecture.
I am at war with my time, with history,
with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.
I am one of millions who do not fit in,
who have no home, no family,
no doctrine, nor firm place to call my own,
no known beginning or end,
no ‘sacred and primoridal site’.
I declare war on all icons and finalities,
on all histories that would chain me with my own falseness,
my own pitiful fears.
I know only moments, and lifetimes that are as moments,
and forms that appear with infinite strength, then ‘melt into air’.
I am an architect, a constructor of worlds,
a sensualist who worships the flesh, the melody, a silhouette against the darkening sky.
I cannot know your name. Nor can you know mine.
Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.
Lebbeus Woods
Manifesto 1993 was for more than ten years the backbone of the permanent collection space of experimental architecture 20th/21st century at the MAK Vienna. Lebbeus Woods’ Manifesto was shown in the permanent MAK architecture collection 1992–2012 among experimental works by Raimund Abraham, Günther Domenig, Driendl*Steixner, Frank O. Gehry, Zaha Hadid, John Hejduk, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Frederick J. Kiesler, Daniel Libeskind, Thom Mayne – Morphosis Architects, Eric Owen Moss, Carl Pruscha, Helmut Richter and Rudolph M. Schindler.
Image on top, Quake City Project, 1995 by Lebbeus Woods
axonométrica 