EARTHWAVE
An installation designed by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph a. Kumpusch
On view June – December 2013
Located in the Arts District's Bloom Square, at the intersection of Traction Avenue, Rose Street and East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013

Earthwave, Arts District, Downtown L.A.

Earthwave was initially designed by Lebbeus Woods and Christoph a. Kumpusch in collaboration with Adam Orlinski for the Biennale of Architecture and Art of the Mediterranean (BaaM) in Reggio Calabria, Italy and is based on a Lebbeus Woods drawing from 1997. It is an installation that proves to a new generation that there is a fine line between "unbuilt" and "unbuildable." It is an inhabitable drawing which allows one to move through the structure's swarms at 1:1 scale.

Earthwave is a 3-dimensional embodiment of Woods' ideals, a challenge to the perceived notion of what is considered architecture and a transcendental experience of inhabitation.

The site of the project—a busy walkable intersection in downtown L.A.'s Arts Distric—will free it from being perceived as an object to be viewed from a distance and transform the structure into a metric of urbanity meant to be freely moved through.

The Earthwave installation precedes a SCI-Arc Gallery exhibition forthcoming in fall 2013, titled LEBBEUS WOODS. "In that house of shadows where Lebbeus Woods still plies his pen, all the architects, from the caves onward, follow each movement of Lebbeus's hand that is drafting for us all a new lease on survival…"—Apologies to A. Malraux // "Not farewell, but fare forward, warriors."—Krishna to Arjuna

Installation Team
CaK_LAB is the experimental arm of Forward Slash (/) the multidisciplinary, New York-based office headed by architect Christoph a. Kumpusch. Within this domain, the office investigates technology and material effects on form and tectonics. The office is both a design and publishing outfit, producing a number of essays, books, exhibitions, podcasts, and films. Kumpusch holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Technology from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. He is a Professor of Architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) and at Pratt Institute. The recently completed Light Pavilion at the Sliced Porosity Block by Steven Holl Architects in Chengdu, China, is one of several projects in over a decade of collaboration between Kumpusch and Lebbeus Woods.

Project team
Adam Orlinski, Ryan J. Simons, Ali Fouladi, William Orlando, Cecil Barnes & Carlos Rodriguez