This two-part collection of drawings and sketches represents a powerful postwar critique of architecture and a radical reimagining of the urban environment. The materials provide scholars and researchers valuable insight on a theoretical architect known for detailed renderings that serve as near-cinematic statements of his philosophy.

Drawing for A-City (left), Lebbeus Woods, ca. 1985–1986. Drawing for 4 Cities and Beyond (right), Lebbeus Woods, ca. 1997. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.24. Acquired with partial support of the GRI Council. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods

Acquired with partial support of the Getty Research Institute Council, the 52 drawings for Lebbeus Woods's A-City and 4 Cities and Beyond projects (ca. 1982–1997), six of which were donated, establish a complete vision for an alternate world. Though fragmentary, each drawing puts on display the totality of Woods's urbanistic fantasies, constituting a conceptual masterplan for the projects' development.

A 30-page sketchbook that Woods kept during one of his many visits to Los Angeles illustrates both the architect's working process and, through handwritten notes, his various lines of thinking on the city and on the production of cinema-stage representations.

Selections from the Los Angeles sketchbook, Lebbeus Woods, 1986–1988. Getty Research Institute, 2018.M.25. Gift of The Woods Edge Partnership. © Estate of Lebbeus Woods

Both the collections of drawings and the sketchbook are complemented by two significant holdings already in the Research Institute's special collections: Lebbeus Woods Drawings for the Berlin Free Zone Project (1990) and Lebbeus Woods Journals, 1988–1997.