Casas ideales. Una experiencia didáctica en Cooper Union, 2011. Lebbeus Woods

Review of Lebbeus Woods' post Four Ideal Homes: First Year Study, 2012.

Abstract

The text analyses the pedagogical experience developed by Lebbeus Woods during his final semester teaching at Cooper Union in 2012, focused on the design of “Four Ideal Houses.” Each house corresponds to a basic geometric form (cube, cylinder, cone, pyramid) and a time of day (dawn, noon, dusk, midnight), embodying universal architectural principles and exploring the relationship between form, time, site, and habitability. The proposal encourages collaborative work centred on the human scale, understood not as graphic representation but as tectonic integration between body, form, and construction. Woods connects this experience to a tradition of ideal architectures stretching from Vitruvius to Archigram, Abraham, and Holl, emphasising their potential to structure the complexity of the urban landscape through typologies. The text highlights the projective nature of the experiment, where limiting variables stimulates metaphor and poiesis, with references to Donna Haraway. Finally, it underlines a dialectical teaching method based on the oscillation between the ideal and the material, between concept and construction, reaffirming the possibility that ideal architecture may not only be conceived but indeed constructed, as a testament to critical imagination and projective action.