NYRA on the Other Town

Lebbeus Woods had impossibly high hopes for his 1984 project, Epicyclarium, a speculative pavilion recalling Boullée’s cenotaph to Newton. He imagined that the multi-level, mixed-reality, rich-yet-schematic structure would “correlate and unify diverse fields of study and work,” including “scientists, artists and technicians with the goal of making this project a center of human knowledge and creative capacity.”

Needless to say, the Epicyclarium was unbuildable. Despite, or because of, this fact, Woods elaborated a cosmology around the project that pulled on the past as much as it did from sci-fi futures. Focusing on three projects unburdened by the frictions of reality,Ecologies, 1984–1990 (open through Feb. 4 at West Hollywood’s Friedman Benda gallery) effectively elevates Woods from his obscure posting as high priest paper architecture to the heights of conceptual art. The move, staged by curator Jennifer Olshin, works: it only seems fair to slot Woods alongside contemporaries like H.R. Giger (Alien) and Syd Mead (Blade Runner).